The Bells are Ringing
by phfina
Summary: Chapter 7: The things you find going on in laundry rooms these days. And college students study when again? Oh, and don't say to Rosalie 'take me,' unless you're clear she's clear on what you mean. Warning: explicit and dark implications.
1. Laundry Wear

Follows Rosalie and Bella after Alice calls warning that Bella will become Rosalie's singer and die from Rosalie's ensuing uncontrollable blood lust.

**Story/Chapter summary:**

Meanwhile, back at the (Dartmouth) ranch ... or: What happened to Bella and Rosalie after Alice warned them about Bella becoming Rosalie's singer? ch01: Bella and Rosalie are "preparing" to spend Christmas back at Forks. Yeah. "Preparing." Yeah. (LEMONS!)

**Setting:** Whittemore Hall, Dartmouth College, December 2006, the eve of Christmas Break.

* * *

I could not believe the words my seer sister was saying. _Me?_ Lose control? _Me?_ Kill _my Bella?_

I tolerated her nonsensical words about her nonsensical vision for as long as I could, but when she got to the part where she hinted at kidnapping Bella again or separating us, I couldn't stand it any more. I almost lost my eternal cool.

And I never did that.

"'_But Rosalie...'"_ I snarled into the phone, imitating my little sister's trying-to-be-reasonable-squeaky voice and dismissed her with a curt good night, snapping the phone shut, and looked up to see the damage done.

Bella looked at me with big saucer eyes.

Yes, there was a lot of damage done. Leave it to Alice to call on the eve of the Christmas break, for goodness sake, to spoil the mood for Bella who already had Christmas issues.

What, with _Edward_ spoiling the last Christmas for her by leaving her high and dry?

_Jerk!_

"Rosalie," Bella said seriously, "what's this about?"

I tried to postpone the inevitable. I waved dismissively, but I couldn't completely mask the annoyance that crept into my voice.

"Bella," I sighed, "it's nothing. Just a ridiculous vision Alice had about you becoming my singer and me killing you, okay? And that will never happen, all right?"

Bella's face became confused as she took this in.

Look. I know this was the weakest explanation and consolation in the world, okay? I realize this. But one thing I promised myself — one thing I promised her — is that I wouldn't lie to her, and I wouldn't withhold things from her, either. _Some person_ tried do that to her already, and I wasn't going to repeat that mistake. Even if I felt it was completely the wrong thing to say. Like now. But we had an agreement, an understanding. If Bella asked a question, then she was ready to hear the answer.

Even if I felt it would hurt her.

Because lying to her? Keeping things from her?

That hurt her so much more.

And _I_ wasn't going to hurt her in that way.

Even if the truth I said hurt her in other ways.

"How could that never happen, Rose, if Alice saw it happening?" Bella asked in a scared little quiet voice, filled with concern.

Not for herself. For me. She was concerned how me killing her would hurt my feelings.

She is such a selfless little dummy in that way.

But the thing about Alice's visions? They were always _ooh! so scary and portentious!_ and never amounted to anything.

Except the ones that did. And when they did, they were so much worse than what any of us could ever had imagined that ...

That you had to treat every one of the with this ponderous gravity that none of them really deserved.

Except the ones that came true.

Why couldn't Alice have visions like "Ooh! You and Bella have a nice time at the movies and then have really sweet sex back at the dorm"?

But no.

"It can't happen," I explained as patiently as I could, "because firstly, you don't _become_ a singer, you either are or you aren't, and secondly, okay, so, let's say you do become my singer. So what?" I demanded this angrily as I tied my hair back. "I've never made a mistake, and you know your blood is more appealing to me than anybody else's I've smelled; it's like you're almost my singer already. And I'm doing just fine now, thank you."

It's true. It's hard, being near Bella. It always is. She smells _just so good._ And every time I take her, every time I come, I just want to complete the consummation by biting her neck and drinking my fill of her.

Nothing could top an orgasm like that. Nothing.

Except having her, still alive, whimpering her little whimpers of her own pleasure, not pain, and drifting off to sleep ... in my arms.

Top that?

You can't. Because nothing can. No blood, not even hers, could top me holding my lover who loves me for — no: _despite!_ — what I am.

So it's hard resisting my natural inclinations. But Bella's worth it.

And I'm a Hale. And don't you ever forget that. I don't. I look in the mirror every day and tell myself that: 'I am Rosalie Lillian Hale.'

Bella thinks I'm vain for my mirror time. Everybody does. I let them think that. But maybe Bella's starting to see there's more to it than vanity and pride. Well, not more than pride, the right kind of pride, the pride that says I'm better and stronger than my weaknesses. The pride that says I'm above it all, because I refuse to act like everybody else because _everybody does it._ I'm not like everybody else. I refuse to lower myself to giving into baser instincts.

_I rise above._

But my explanation didn't seem to help Bella at all. I thought I hid my angry determination better, but Bella's eyes only got rounder.

"Oh, no!" she gasped.

"What?" I demanded in confusion; I thought my explanation would help allay her fears.

Bella pointed to my head. I raised my eyebrow.

"When you put your hair up in a pony tail like that, it means only one thing ..." Bella whispered fearfully.

I grinned predatorily as I glided toward her. Humans couldn't process many things at once, so I knew that if my explanation didn't help her, well, I'd ... _help _her in other ways.

"What does it mean, Bella?" I whispered to her face, now towering above her.

"You know exactly what it means, Rosalie Hale," Bella looked up at me, sounding both fierce and scared at the same time. "And it doesn't mean sweet and gentle, it means ferocious and demanding!"

My smile widened: "Ferocious and demanding what?"

Bella was just so shy about using words. She couldn't even say the word _fuck _at all, nor even _sex,_ for that matter, without blushing furiously. She's such a sweet and innocent girl. A perfect lover for me.

"You know!" Bella blushed furiously.

See what I mean?

Her blush always heated her blood to a deliciously perfect temperature, and also released pheromones that screamed _come hither!_ to me.

Her pull for me was irresistible, in so many ways. I always had to make sure I had hunted recently, but even then, the pull of her blood was incredible.

Good thing I am a Hale.

But her pheromones were giving me a call that I chose not to resist.

I reached down and cradled the back of her head with my hand and wrapped my other arm around her back, pulling her body into mine. Her body fit into mine perfectly, molding and fitting itself to my form. I bent my head down and pressed my lips against hers.

We kissed.

And I held that kiss until I felt her initial resistance melt, until I felt her body against mine go limp. Her body was just so warm, almost hot, so pulsating with life ... and mine is so cold, compared to hers, so dead. I so want her; I so want that life that is her.

I so want that. But I so want her like this: alive, and, by God, I'm going to enjoy every living moment of hers, while that is still possible ... even as this living, breathing being in my arms causes pangs of hunger so painful that it feels like it burns me to hold her.

But hold her I do, I can't but hold her, for her dear life.

I pulled back and smiled into her closed eyes.

"You don't want?" I asked breathily.

"Rosalie," Bella said weakly, eyes still closed, "we have to ..."

I kissed her again, my tongue licked her bottom lip, seeking entrance to her mouth, and she opened herself to me, complying.

My tongue went in, exploring her, tasting the lavender and freesia heavenly perfection and torturous hell that she is.

I didn't need to know from her what she thought we needed to do, for I already knew exactly what we needed to do. And so did she. She just needed a bit of persuasion, is all.

Her arms wrapped around me, holding me as tightly as her frail human form allowed.

I think I had persuaded her.

"_You_ have to sleep," I commanded. "We have a long day of travel tomorrow."

She just needed somebody to look after her. Really. She was always worrying about everybody and every thing else, that she never took care of herself.

Sometimes I felt like a mother hen.

Not that I minded that so much.

"And this is sleeping?" She opened her eyes and asked quizzically.

It wasn't but the ... _activity_ ... would ease her back to sleep.

"After," I said simply.

"After what?" she asked.

I sighed to myself. Sometimes it was very trying, very hard to believe that she wasn't putting on an act. For all that she's been exposed to her life, she was really so innocent about everything.

I liked her that way, and wouldn't change nor corrupt that innocence for anything.

But sometimes it got in the way of things ... just like her night shirt.

I reached down to her collar.

Bella's eyes grew wide. "Rosalie, don't!" she cried.

Too late.

_Rip_ went the shirt and buttons flew everywhere. Her nightshirt hung loosely and opened just off her shoulders.

Bella's face reddened again as she quickly wrapped her arms about herself, keeping her shirt on, trying desperately to preserve her dignity and modesty.

"You know," she said angrily, "you think you'd treat my clothes with more respect, seeing how much money you spend on them!"

Actually, her night clothes _weren't_ expensive, nor even ostentatious.

They were cotton.

Cotton night clothes. How (not) sexy is that?

But Bella absolutely refused anything with any ... well, _anything_ to them. So she wore long sleeved collared white nightshirts and matching pajama bottoms.

Yes, I know! ... but compared to the clothes she _used to _wear? Ratty sweat pants and hand-me-down Colt beer tees from Charlie? For God's sake?

You make the improvements you can, and you don't push it.

You _can't_ push it. Not with Bella.

Because when I tried to give her a La Perla white lace silk teddy and matching panties? That would be _my_ night clothes. If Bella wore that, I think that she would actually die from the embarrassment. And we can't have that, now, can we?

When we go shopping in the Dartmouth mall, the minute she senses that I try to direct her to Victoria's Secret, she gets all stiff and unmanageable. One time the mall security even asked us if there was a problem.

There was, because she almost died right there when she realized she was making a scene. I have no idea how Alice can direct her without getting this kind of resistance. Knowing Alice, she probably does get that kind of resistance, and ignores it, and pushes Bella, heels dragging, to wherever Alice wants to go.

But Bella's angry outburst was just _so cute!_ It was hard to keep my countenance. But laughing in her face at her little kitten anger over the loss of cheap Macy's pajamas? Definitely a mood spoiler, and the mood needed to be cultivated, not spoilt.

I reached further down and ripped off her 'expensive' white matching pajama bottoms, exposing her floral print cotton panties, but this time I cast the pajama bottoms aside, instead of leaving it on, as I did for her shirt.

Bella squeaked out one of her little surprised shrieks, wonderfully surprisingly high in contrast to her usually calm alto voice.

"Holy crow!" she cried. "What is your problem with my clothes! Can't you just take them off? But no, not 'rip'm Rosalie'!"

"Sure I can 'just take them off,'" I said reasonably.

But what was the fun of that? Ripping off Bella's clothes? I was getting _more_ in the mood.

"I bet you can't!" Bella countered hotly.

"Oh?" I asked quietly ... and dangerously.

Suddenly Bella was scared. "Um..." She tried to backpedal.

But she knew the deal. A wager had been put forward, and it couldn't, now, be taken back.

"My dear lady witnesses," I said to the world in an officiating tone, as Bella whispered an _'oh, God! not this again!'_

Yes, this again. This would be the eighteenth time Bella had made the mistake of saying 'I bet' on something, so this was the eighteenth time I invoked the 'lady witnesses,' whoever they were, be they the Muses or Norns or Fates or whomever.

I continued: "Our Bella has put forward a bet, that I cannot have an article of clothing removed from her delicious body without it being torn to shreds."

I smiled wickedly at my Bella, and she shivered fearfully.

"As insurmountable as this sounds," I continued in the same officious tone, "a Hale never backs down from a challenge."

I paused significantly, then: "I accept. The terms: I am to take Bella's panties ... off, undamaged, or Bella is to remove them herself, for me to win. For you to win, my dear, ..."

I looked at scared little Bella, loving her discomfort. "They are to remain on your person, or if I do take them off forcibly ..." _which I would never do ..._ "tearing them, that, too, gives you the victory. And the prize, my dear lady witnesses? The winner gets to have her way with the loser, for the remainder of the night; the loser must do everything the winner demands, immediately and without question."

I smiled again, almost purring with delight.

"Do you accept this wager, or ..." I paused significantly, "are you going to welch, and live with the very humiliating and very long-term consequences of wussing out?"

Bella thought for a second, then her entire countenance changed. She went from a scared little mousy girl to a strong and determined ... little mousy girl.

God, she is just so cute!

She unwrapped her arms from herself, and grasped the side of her panties with her right hand, wrinkling the 'expensive' cotton, and her left splayed over the front of her panties, covering the part of her body very vulnerable to my attacks, as she's discovered in the past. As she'll discover again ... and soon.

"I accept!" she said fiercely. "This is a bet I'm _finally_ going to win, because there's no way these panties are coming off!"

Did I mention how cute she looks when she tries to be fierce?

Her nightshirt managed to slip further down her shoulders during her defensive maneuver, so now it was hanging, precariously, from her arms and her ... front. I looked at the shirt, and Bella squeezed her arms tightly to herself, trying to keep as much covered as possible.

It was a losing battle ... just like the wager she just so foolishly accepted.

"Then let the games begin!" I announced, pleased.

Bella gave me dagger eyes. "I'm so going to enjoy winning. I'm going to ... I'm going to ... to be on top this time! Ha!"

This time I couldn't suppress the snort of laughter escaping from my sealed lips. It looked like any way this bet went I would win. Because if I lost? Bella? On top? That would be a memory to cherish ... if I could stop myself from laughing as she tried to be forceful on top but would stop to check if I'm okay: _snarl, snarl, _goes gentle little Bella as she grinds into me in what she believes to be a forceful manner, then: _'I'm not hurting you, am I, Rose?'_

Yes, I probably would laugh then.

But losing? And I don't lose bets. _Ever._

After all, I'm a Hale. This was a point of pride now.

Besides, the way I set up the bet? Her panties had to stay on for the rest of the night, or until she fell asleep. Bella, that little dummy, entered a wager for which the only way she could win is to do exactly what I desired.

Again.

Just another reason why I love her so much. She is just so trusting, so naïve ... so innocent.

So Bella.

I stepped back into her closed form, resting my chin on her tensed shoulder.

"Oh, no, _I_ am so going to enjoy winning this bet," I whispered into her ear, "because you're going to help me win it by taking off your panties yourself, that way I won't rip them, even if you do."

"Yeah, right, Rose," Bella whispered back defiantly, but with a hint of concern, "and how are you going to make me do that?"

"Well," I said, "first we practice on me..." and I removed my silk panties.

"Look," I said, pleased, "no tears!"

"Bravo, Rose," Bella responded sarcastically, "but that's not the bet."

"Well, then," I said easily, "now we practice on you..." and I glided up to her stiff form.

I wrapped my arms around her, picking her up easily. She yelped in surprise at this, but didn't struggle as I brought her to the bed and laid her there, gently. I straddled her supine form, pushing her left hand down firmly against _her _with my ... _body_, cementing it in place, and then locking her right hand, grasping her panties, there with my legs squeezing (very gently) her straddled form.

"Bella," I asked innocently, "why does a girl wake up from a sound sleep at two in the morning?"

Her forehead clouded in confusion. "I heard your cell phone ring, Rose ..."

"It's on vibrate, sweetie," I said, smiling.

"But you were talking ..." she continued, still confused.

"Too quietly for your sweet sleeping self to notice, my dear," I answered, enjoying this game very much.

"... and you left me ... and I felt that ... and I ..." ... and she couldn't continue. She looked away from me, closing her eyes.

And nor could I. She was just so attached to me — as much as I was attached to her — that it _hurt_ her to feel me gone.

I looked away and swallowed, because I couldn't imagine my existence without her, either.

Or I could, but I didn't wish to, because I only needed to look into my past one hundred years of meaningless, _pointless_, existence to know what that would be like.

But then I looked back. _I have Bella now._ For as long as 'now' as I have. And wasting this precious time on regrets?

"I think ..." I said lightly, recalling Bella's beautiful chocolate brown eyes to me, "I think you woke up for an entirely different reason."

She looked at me expectantly.

I took the always full glass of water from the nightstand.

"Are you _thirsty,_ my dear? Would you like some water?" I asked her mischievously.

"Um, ..." Bella said, a tiny bit uncomfortably, "no. Could you, um, actually, excuse me for a human moment?"

"Sure," I said easily. "You take off your panties and leave them right here, and I'll be happy to 'um, actually, excuse' you ..." Here I imitated her endearingly annoying hesitancy ... "for your human moment."

I smiled.

"Because, otherwise, sweetie-dear," I clarified, "get comfortable, because you're staying right here until you do."

"Hey, no fair!" Bella complained, squirming ... or trying to squirm out from under me, but failing to do so, as she was stuck under one thousand pounds of vampire disinclined to move at present.

I sang my response happily, "All's fair in love and war, my dear."

"And which one is this?" she demanded.

"A wager?" I asked surprised, for, after all, wasn't it obvious? "War, of course."

Her brow clouded with indignation.

"Well, fine!" she hissed. "I'll just hold it, then, 'cause, this time, Rosalie, this time, I'm gonna win!"

I pressed my lips together, but they still turned down. Not with displeasure. With pleasure ... I fought my smile so hard that it came out as a quivering frown.

I'm so enjoying this game, mostly because it brings out the fight in my Bella, and I so love to see her fight. Even if there's no way she could possibly win.

Like this time.

Because maybe she could win against someone who didn't fight dirty, but the night wasn't young anymore, and I had to make sure to win ... for her sake. We can't have Bella wasting the night away with her fuming at me or worrying about a silly phone call from my silly seer sister when there's so much else to do.

But this little argument wasn't going anywhere profitably, so I hummed noncommittally in response, and said, "So, while we're waiting for you to capitulate ..." and drew apart her nightshirt. The cloth rubbed against her nipples, causing them to harden.

I looked down, admiring all of my Bella — my beautiful Bella — then looked into her now wide eyes.

"God, Bella," I said in awe, "you are just so beautiful!"

Bella shook her head.

"God, Rose," she replied disbelievingly, "you are just so blind!"

That brought me up short.

"Really?" I demanded. "How so?"

She snorted. "Like: you're the only person who thinks that, that's how."

Well, she was wrong there. A previous person attached to her felt exactly that way, but bringing up _Edward_ would be a mood-killer for me for sure.

So I decided to make a game of this, too.

"That's not what I'm told," I said teasingly.

"Huh?" Bella asked in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Oh," I said nonchalantly, "just that some girl asked if my hot roommate was available for a liaison or if she had a boyfriend already."

Bella drew in a shocked breath.

"Who said that?" she asked in surprise.

"Samantha..." I said.

"Who?" Bella asked.

I blinked. Talk about blind. That word, right there, probably described my Bella better than any other. Seeing in me things that noone else saw? Not seeing the obvious advances from ... well, from everyone back at Forks High School and now at Dartmouth? Good thing I was so used to the admiring and jealous looks from others. They meant nothing ... until, in an alley in a cold winter night in Rochester, they did mean something. So I watched everyone looking at Bella carefully, protecting her from harm, but as opposed to being jealous of my Bella, I was actually proud. I picked the best girl in the world to love, for she is kind and beautiful: everybody sees it.

Except my Bella. My dear, blind Bella.

"You know," I answered patiently, "Samantha." Samantha of the lithe figure and hennaed hair. "Samantha, the girl in the dorm room right next to ours that we see every day going to class ... or, well, you do on sunny days ... Samantha the _panther."_

"The panther?" Bella asked a bit fearfully.

"Yes," I explained. "The panther. She hunts down fresh, young, bi-curious girls and ... _satisfies_ their curiosity."

"How does she know they are bi-curious?" Bella asked.

It was always so easy to distract Bella. Just throw a nugget her way, and she, like every one of Samantha's conquests, would not rest until her curiosity was satisfied.

That's how, I learnt, she found out about us, our kind: she became curious, and nothing would stop her until she found out everything.

And she did.

"I think," I said in answer, "that Samantha, always on the prowl, thinks any virginal girl is at least a little bit bi-curious, so ..." and I shrugged.

"Well," said Bella, rolling her eyes, "that puts me _way_ out of the running, then."

Technically that's up for debate, now, isn't it? Bella's hymen is still intact. I am very careful in this. We can't have that ripping and blood flow during intercourse, as that would turn a passionate moment tragic in an instant.

And during her periods? I'm sorry, but I just have to clear out. Bella says she understands, but she doesn't. Not really. I love her too much to stay around ... and kill her when I accidently draw a breath of that blood-scented air filling our dorm room during her time.

But I answered simply: "I think Samantha's definition of 'virginal' is 'anyone who hasn't slept with her.' And by 'sleeping' I mean..."

"Jeez, Rose, I know what you mean by 'sleeping,' okay?" Bella blushed. "So you told her that I'm out of the picture for her, right?"

I shrugged.

Bella didn't like my shrug. "Wait," she said, "what did you tell her when she asked about me ... you did tell her I was taken, right?"

"I told her," I answered, "that I would ask you."

I cannot assume possession of my Bella.

Because she isn't my Bella. Unless she chooses to be.

"Well, you asked," Bella said, "so now you can tell her I _am_ taken, thank you very much. I mean, c'mon, Rose, why do even think you have to ask me. Really."

Bella's eyes narrowed at me, scoldingly, and I looked away.

After a moment, she continued. "I'm surprised she didn't ask you."

Who said she didn't? I shrugged again.

Bella gasped. "What did you say?"

I looked back at the girl I love with everything I am beneath me.

"Rose." Bella demanded. "Rose, what did you say?"

I smiled a sad smile and bent down, kissing my love's forehead.

"You are so sweet when you're jealous, do you know that, Bella?" I said.

"What did you tell her?" Bella would not be distracted.

I smiled again, but answered right away: "I told her, in so many words, that she should look elsewhere."

Relief spread across Bella's face, and she drew in a large breath.

"I don't know why you said that," Bella said with regret. "Because ..." here Bella looked down at herself, "because if I know who you're talking about, she's a lot prettier than me. I'm actually surprised you didn't take her up on her offer ... and leave me."

Bella looked away sadly.

_Sorry, Bella, dear, but I don't do pity. And I won't allow you to wallow in self-loathing._

"Would you like me to?" I demanded.

"_No!"_ Bella exclaimed, then said apologetically, "it's just that I'm ... and Samantha's ... it's just that ..."

I don't care what it will take, but I _shall_ find a way, somehow, some day, to show Bella her innate goodness and beauty ... and my undying ... my undead, actually, ... immortal love for her, and her, alone.

"Let me tell you something about Samantha, and about every other person in the world, Bella," I said, demanding her full attention. "Samantha will never experience this."

I bent down, cradling Bella's head in my hands, and looked at her.

Then I pressed my stone-cold marble-smooth lips to her soft and yielding and human lips, and I held that kiss, and I held that kiss.

And I held that kiss.

I pulled away and looked down at my lover's enraptured face.

"I don't love Samantha, Bella; I love you. I love only you, and it's you that I love now and for ever and ever."

Bella opened her eyes. Then she smiled warmly.

"My," she said, _"somebody's_ gotten all serious all-of-the-sudden like."

I smiled back, but thought _damned straight._ My Bella? She was seriously worth fighting for.

"Well," was all I answered.

"But don't think that will get you to win the bet, either," she teased.

"Oh?" I said. "Well, I guess we'll have to win another way."

"How?" Bella asked.

"Well," I answered, "here's something else Samantha will never feel."

I cupped Bella's breast.

She gasped and her body jerked as if shocked.

Because that's what her touch felt to me: an electric shock.

Every single time I touched her skin.

"But they're so tiny!" she complained.

This again. I sighed.

"And I so love touching them!" I answered, ignoring her complaint. You can only explain something so many times before it turns to whining or nagging.

Rosalie Hale does neither.

I was tempted to do more than touch and stroke them with my fingers, but we could save that for after I won the bet, because now Bella squirmed for another reason entirely, so I continued very, very gently stroking her breasts, chest, arms, and stomach.

"Rose," Bella gasped, "that tickles!"

"Does it now?" I asked in a surprised voice, although I wasn't surprised at all. "Well," I continued, "your hands are protecting your virtue and those precious panties of yours, leaving my hands free rein to roam, so that's what they're doing, roaming," I stroked her breasts again, very lightly, Bella squirmed. "Roaming," I said, continuing my stroking of her chest and arms. Bella stopped breathing, pressing her lips together. "Roaming," I said, my fingers just barely touching her stomach now.

I looked at her significantly.

"Rose," Bella squealed, "no!"

"Oh, yes, Bella," I answered, "oh, yes!"

And I brought all my fingers into play, tickling her stomach and sides mercilessly.

Bella screamed out, convulsing in laughter.

I love hearing the sound of Bella laughing, because that is a sound that never came from her before. She never laughed when she was with Edward. She was always so serious, so her unrestrained laughter? The sound of her happiness and joy? It was a sound I treasured. So I tickled her more, making her laugh that beautiful laugh of hers all the more.

And I kept at it, until I got exactly what I wanted.

"No, Rose, no!" Bella squeaked. "I'm gonna ... I'm gonna pee! No, Rose! I'm ..."

I pressed down on her bladder with the palm of my hand.

"Pee," I breathed my command to her.

"Eek!" Bella cried out, and I caught the scent in the air, and I could sense the wetness, just a little bit, spread on her panties and her virtuous, protective hand.

In that instant I stopped tickling her, and lifted her from the bed quickly before she soiled the sheets, rushing her to the bathroom, standing her by the toilet.

"Dirty pool, Rosalie, dirty pool!" Bella complained, scrunched up, holding it in as best she could.

"Panties," pointing to the plastic bucket by the toilet bowl, keeping the victorious smile from my voice. Trying to, that is.

Oh, and why was the plastic bucket there? Bella didn't have accidents ... often.

Because, of course, we don't wager ... often.

She took off her panties and threw them into the bucket angrily, sitting down on the toilet.

"I win," and I smiled.

"Yeah, yeah!" Bella fumed, finishing and flushing. "But if you hadn't cheated, I would've won!"

"But you didn't!" I sang. "Who won, Bella? Say it."

Okay, so I was rubbing it in.

Ask me if I care.

Besides, betting against me? She deserved her comeuppance because it was her own foolish pride — her own damn fault — that got her into this ... she could blame nobody but herself.

"You win, Rosalie," Bella said, washing her hands, her stiff back toward me. "You always win," she added in a petulant whisper.

"That's right," I answered. "And to the victor goes the spoils, so, you, young miss, into the shower." And then I ordered at her hesitation: "Now."

"_Hmphf!"_ she snorted disobediently, but she actually did disrobe and hop into the shower and started it going. She liked the water warm-to-hot. Just like I liked my Bella warm-to-me, then hot ... very hot.

And I took off my teddy and hopped right in after her.

Bella looked back at me in surprise. "Did I get you dirty?" she asked apologetically.

"No, honey," I answered, "but I won the bet, so I'm in charge of getting you squeaky clean. Turn around, I'm going to do your back first."

She turned, and I wet then lathered the washcloth, soaping her backslide

Then I pressed my body into her back. She yelped in surprise.

May I just say that I love her little yelps?

Then I reached around and lathered her frontside as I let the soap on her back soap my front.

The feeling of Bella's body? All slicked with soap? _Hmmm!_

Well ... it was a very good washing my body, I will say that!

"Now turn around, sweetie, I'm going to do your front." I commanded.

"I thought you already did?" Bella asked.

"... and spread your legs," I added.

"Oh." Bella said, turning her front to face me.

But she couldn't look at me.

"You are such a shy little thing!" I exclaimed.

Bella blushed.

I knelt down in front of my Bella, looking at her shy, quivering lips.

_God!_ _She's so beautiful!_

I kissed her inner thigh with a sweet, light kiss, and then rubbed the washcloth along one leg, then the other, then washed her vulva with a couple of strokes, then reached behind her and washed her butt and anus, very lightly.

I rinsed out the soap from the washcloth and then squeezed it out, reaching around the shower curtain and throwing the cloth into bucket.

I stood. "All done," I said, "wash your hair, rinse off and come on back out when you're done."

I rinsed myself first and waited for my sweetie. She took longer in the shower. She had to compensate more for her body that she had ... difficulty at times controlling.

My Bella has balance issues. It's endearing at times, frustrating others, ... and very, very ... _very_ dangerous when a fall leads to a cut.

Because it may be possible for Bella to see me as just Rosalie, not 'Rosalie the Vampire' ... but that's what I am, and I never forget that, because if I forget that for one second, that's all the time it would take for Bella to be dead in my arms.

But she doesn't need to know of my vigilance, of course.

I handed her our towel as she stepped out of the shower. Water just ran off me, as I don't have pores, so we shared a towel. I loved the smell of _her_ on the towel, just as she loved smelling me there, too.

A shared towel actually worked very well for both of us.

Bella looked at me cautiously as she wrapped herself in the towel. "That went very differently than how I thought it'd go."

I raised my eyebrow at her.

"I thought," she explained, "you were going to maul me in there."

I sighed. My little Bella has vocabulary issues, too. But I felt I could let go the difference between _maul_ and _ravish._

... this time.

"How are you going to do the laundry with you floating in euphoria from my ravishment?" I asked.

Okay, so I couldn't _entirely_ let go of the difference.

"Laundry?" Bella asked.

"Bella," I explained, "we'll be gone for two weeks. Do you want to come back to a dorm smelling of musty washcloth and pee from your panties?"

"Oh," Bella said, blushing. "Right," she added helpfully.

"So," I continued, "gather the laundry, and I'll get you your laundry wear."

"'Laundry wear'?" Bella asked.

I waved her on: "Run along, Bella, no time to waste!"

As she did that, I went to our closet, and selected her laundry wear, a pale green and translucent Farr West Georgette sheer slip. I got a matching white one for myself and put it on.

Bella came into the bedroom, still wrapped in her towel. "I got the lau-... Oh, my God!"

I held out the pale green slip to her, smiling.

"What the hell is that!" she demanded angrily.

"Your laundry wear," I answered factually.

Bella gaped at me with wide, scared eyes.

* * *

**Chapter End Notes:**

[1] Okay, my dears, so I kind of got carried away in the writing of this ... I know, surprise, surprise (rolls eyes) ... and 20,000 words later ... *sigh* Anyway, I've broken this "chapter" into seven chapters, so, yes, there is some Rosalie and Bella goodness coming at you. Um, don't read these chapters at work or during class, okay? 'Cause they are definitely NSFW!

[2] Rosalie explains Bella's beauty, including her perfectly proportioned breasts ('tiny' according to Bella, who, in my opinion, has seen too many Vogue magazines with women on the front covers with big boobs), in my brother's story "My Sister Rosalie" (MSR), ch 55 "Beautiful." And any time he wants to come out with the next chapter is fine with me, hint-hint.

[3] I was going to throw in a dig where Rosalie said, "Well, you breasts are bigger than Alice's" and Bella rolls her eyes says something like "Obviously, but Alice doesn't count," and Rosalie asking if she should tell her sister Alice what Bella just said with Bella squeeing in discomfort and the same time Rosalie hears her cell buzz with a text message from Alice saying "Wotz dis abt my tits?" But it just didn't seem to fit, and I'm right sorry about that.

[4] Of course there's tickling in bb's MSR ch 43 "Tickle! Tickle!" but this is like an entirely different kind of tickling. Really! This here is love-play whereas bb's was ... um, cute in a weird and scary way? Kinda like how he is, actually ... but in a 'good' way. Okay, okay, just kidding about bb.


	2. Safe Word

**Chapter summary:** A funny thing happened between Bella and Rosalie on the way to the laundry room, except ... sadly ... it wasn't funny at all.

* * *

Bella looked at the translucent pale-green slip that was to be her 'laundry wear' in shock.

Then she regathered her wits.

"Rosalie, no," Bella adamantly refused. She waved at me, up and down, holding the laundry basket one-handed. "You can see _everything!_ I'm more dressed in this towel!"

"Bella," I said warningly, a dangerous tone entering my voice, "are you going to go back on your word?"

"Rose, ..." Bella begged.

I _love_ it when Bella begs ... about _certain things._

I looked into the laundry basket ... my clothes from today were in there, and so were Bella's.

For her that meant a brown sweater and blue jeans. No surprises there.

I pouted. "Browns and blues, that's all you ever wear is browns and blues. I want to see you in a different color for a change, huh?"

"But, Rose," Bella pleaded, _"everyone_ will see _me_ ... you hear me, Rose? _Me, all of me ... _though that green ... _nothing!"_

"At three o'clock in the morning?" I asked reasonably. "Besides Bella, you know the score, it's either this 'green nothing' as you call it ... or just nothing. Those are your only options. And you choose. Right now."

"Please tell me I can wear a bra and panties under that, at least."

"No," I answered resolutely.

"_Jeez!"_ Bella exclaimed, "if I knew this was how I had to pay off the bet, I would've ..."

"Tick-tock, Bella," I said impatiently, "take off that towel now, and either put this slip on ..." then I added provocatively: _"... or not."_

"Okay, okay, already!" She exclaimed and quickly put down the laundry basket and slipped out of her towel, revealing her beautiful body to me.

I was right in front of her. "I kind of like the 'nothing' option now ..." I said in a sultry voice.

Bella rolled her eyes. "Don't get yourself excited!" she scolded.

"Too late," I replied. I cast the slip aside, grabbing my Bella to me, and kissed her deeply and passionately.

She resisted at first, of course, in surprise at the quickness of my action, but she soon got the drift of what was happening to her, so then she melted into the kiss, and let it happen to her.

That is, let _me_ happen to her.

But then I _had_ to pull back.

"Whew!" I gasped. "Laundry! Laundry!" I reminded myself.

"Why?" Bella blinked at me, looking all so irresistible with her big eyes.

"You!" I growled. "In that slip! Now! And get that cute little tail of yours down the hall to the laundry room; right now!"

Bella stuck her tongue out at me. "Bossy!" she fussed.

Then she muttered "Always starting something you don't finish!" as she put on the slip.

She was right about one thing: I saw everything, and the slip, paradoxically and impossibly, made her look _more_ sexy than when she was just so recently towel-less.

"Oh, I'll finish something, all right!" I declared.

"Really?" Bella asked hopefully.

"Yes," I said, "getting you to do the laundry, now move it." I opened the door for my sexy-feisty Bella.

Bella glared at me balefully as she passed me at the door.

I don't know if that glare could have even scared a mouse.

Bella scurried as quickly as she could down the hall.

"Why are you all scrunched up like that, Bella?" I asked, as I kept one step behind her easily.

"Excuse me, Miss I'm-comfortable-walking-down-the-hall-wearing-almost-nothing," Bella said annoyed, "but some of us don't want to get caught out in the open like this, okay?"

"It really shows off you cute butt when you squeeze it like that," I mentioned, looking down at her cute butt.

"_God! Rosalie Hale!"_ Bella tried to scurry faster.

I reached out, easily, over her shoulder with my right arm, cupping her breast, and the other arm I wrapped around her midsection, pulling her into me.

Bella dropped the laundry basket in surprise. It hit the carpeting (not her feet and toes, thankfully) with a muffled _thump._

"I can't stand it any more, Bella," I admitted, "That cute butt of yours got to me. I want to fuck you, right here, right now."

I pushed her against the hall wall and hitched up her slip, I couldn't pull up mine, not without squeezing her so hard I'd hurt her, so I'd just have to make do. I pressed my vulva against her ass and started to grind, feeling the silk on her butt, feeling the silk on me. My slip became wet very quickly.

"Rose, stop," Bella said quietly and desperately, "not here, please."

My left hand gently stroked her labia ... they were puffy, and she had started to dew.

"You want this, too, Bella," I said, desperate, but with excitement, stroking her, pressed against her, "You want this, and you're going to come so hard; you will. Just go with it. Just, ..." Then I gasped as I felt myself falling over the edge: "Oh, God! ... just ..."

"Cygnet," Bella whispered sadly.

I froze.

Bella had used her safe word.

"Rose," Bella said quietly, "please let me go."

I let her go. I disentangled myself from her and took two steps back. I couldn't look at her.

Bella readjusted her slip.

I couldn't look at her.

Bella picked up the laundry basket, putting it under one arm. I could feel her looking at me.

She came over to me and took my hand, giving it a gentle tug in the direction of the laundry room.

We walked, in silence, toward the laundry room, and all I could think of was this.

Bella had used her safe word.

She hates using her safe word.

It's so antithetical to everything she is. She wanted to make others happy; she didn't want to put her concerns first.

But I had made her use her safe word, because I had made her feel so uncomfortable that she was afraid or scared or hurt or sad or angry or all of those things.

"I'm ... I'm sorry, Bella," I whispered.

She would never forgive me for this. She couldn't.

I wouldn't.

It was all over, and just because I wanted a little fun, ... at her expense. I promised myself I would never treat anybody like I had been treated: an object ... and that's what I had just done. I hate myself. I shouldn't exist. I ...

"Rose, ..." Bella whispered back.

She put down the laundry basket. I felt her looking at me.

She didn't continue. She didn't know how. She didn't know how to say kindly that she never wanted to see me again and that I should just go to Hell where I belonged.

"I'm sorry, Bella," I repeated. "I know you'll never forgive me, but I'm sorry. I just got carried away. I just ..."

"Yes, you did," Bella acknowledged gravely, and I died a little bit more inside at her very light, but very real, scolding.

"And ... it was so sweet, you randy vampire," she continued.

What?

I must have heard her incorrectly. I must have snapped and started imagining things.

"Rose, look at me," Bella said seriously.

I dared to look at her. She was looking at me just as seriously as the tone carried in her words conveyed.

"But not out here, okay? Huh?" she demanded. _"Inside; _in private, but not out here, all right?"

I wanted to shout at her. I wanted to scream that she couldn't live her life hiding in her room, or in her silly English romance novels, or behind her hair in class or behind me whenever anybody spoke to us. I wanted to tell her not to live her life as if she was this nothing Bella Swan, but to take some chances, to _live, _to live while she was still alive, to live her life as if she were the envy of Aro, had the respect of the entire Volturi, and the love of her own family and ours.

But then I held my tongue and swallowed my anger, because I realized that I wanted to tell her to live her life the way _I_ wanted her to live it.

Just like Edward tried to change her around to be exactly what he wanted her to be.

Maybe I should look in the mirror (more), and change some of my views, instead or too?

Maybe I should see the person standing right in front of me for exactly who she is? And love that person?

She was wearing a nothing, sheer, pale green slip, with a laundry basket at her feet.

But she was clothed in dignity.

And, and I couldn't believe this: she was forgiving me. After all, _I_ had just trod over the dignity of her, and she was _forgiving_ _me_ for that.

I swallowed and nodded convulsively.

"Hug?" she asked.

I breathed out an incredulous whisper of a _"yes."_

She embraced me in a bear hug. I very carefully and very lightly placed my hands on her shoulder blades, not believing that she would allow me to touch her ever again.

"Just," she whispered into my shoulder, "just try to stop when I ask you to, okay, Rose? Please? Just try to stop before I have to ..."

She hugged me as tightly as she could.

"Yes," I said, hugging her back, "yes, I'll stop, and I'm sorry, again, it's just that you're so irresistible to me, and ... and I'm sorry."

"And that's so sweet, Rose," Bella said as she sniffled. I smelled the salt of her tears. "It's so sweet that you find me that way, because ... because nobody ever found me desirable like that."

My blind little Bella.

"And ..." she paused, and I felt a smile on her lips pressed to my collarbone, "I find you that way, too, Rose. You know that, don't you?"

I was about to answer, to thank her, but my breath caught in my throat.

Bella was nibbling on my shoulder with her soft sweet lips, letting her dainty _teeth_ touch my collarbone.

I felt it, her going _nibble, nibble, nibble,_ and then a very gentle _bite._

I absolutely froze.

"Bella," I gasped through my own clenched teeth. "I think if you don't wish to find yourself pressed against that wall again you had better stop that right now!"

"Oh!" Bella gasped in surprise and quickly released me, taking two quick steps backward herself, managing not to trip over her own feet, I was pleased to notice.

"Sorry!" Bella burst out, but it looked like she was holding in a fit of giggles.

"Well," I growled in semi-mock anger. "It is your own damn fault for being so God-damn hot all the time!"

Bella rolled her eyes. "I'll try to work on not being so provocative, okay?"

"You do that!" I commanded, and then pointed imperiously at the laundry basket.

Bella sighed and picked up the basket.

We continued down the hall.

"May I ..." I began, but then shook my head. _Don't push it, Rosalie Hale,_ I commanded myself.

Bella stopped. "Well, what?" she demanded.

"I just wanted to kiss you because I was pleased you used the word 'provocative' ..." I said quietly.

"Rosalie!" Bella barked. "I'm not a three-year-old, okay? I can even spell it, too."

"I know, Bella, it's just that ..." I said.

"It's just that you're amazed that I'm not a stupid three-year-old, nor a college freshman who only knows text-speak," Bella said miffed.

I said nothing.

"You vampires!" she continued angrily. "You're all like, 'oh, wow! Bella can make her own pop-tarts without burning her fingers!' Gimme a break with your awe, already!"

Actually, we _were_ amazed when she didn't burn her fingers or the roof of her mouth when food came from toasting appliances, because the tendency was burnt flesh of some kind ... that's why Esme had taken up cooking, of all things. Talk about a vampire bending over backwards ... _cooking?_

But Esme was Esme.

And Bella had said the word 'vampire,' in public, again.

"Bella," I said quietly, "you shouldn't say that word, even in jest, because of the chance somebody may overhear it."

"... at three am," Bella reminded me sarcastically.

"Somebody could have woken up from our ... 'conversation' in the hall," I justified. "The doors carry sound so easily from the hall. Somebody could be listening at their door right now."

"_Is_ somebody at their door?" Bella demanded.

"Well, no, but ..." I said. My hearing confirmed this.

"And you would've told me if somebody was, right?" Bella pushed.

"Yes, Bella, but you always have to ..."

Bella held up her hand.

"Okay, I got it; spare me the lecture." Bella voice carried finality. "I was being too casual 'cause I deal with this stuff all the time, I forget what it was like before and the Big Secret and the One Rule and everything." She moved her index finger closed against her thumb across her lips: "No more saying the 'v'-word, okay?"

I sighed. I wanted her to be more serious about this, because this truly was a life-or-death matter, but she asked not to be lectured, and she knows, first hand, the weightiness of this matter. Me repeating this would just be nagging and fall on deaf and obstinate ears.

I looked away.

"Do you still want to kiss me for using the word 'provocative'?" she asked humbly.

"Yes," I whispered, still not looking at her.

"Okay," she said, and I looked back at her. "You may," she added.

I put my hands on her shoulders.

"No tongues," she said.

I tried not to sigh, nor to laugh.

I leaned in slightly and put a very light kiss on her forehead and withdrew.

She looked up into my eyes with awe. "You really are a sweetheart!" she exclaimed.

I shook my head. "Bella ..." I said.

Her face clouded with anger, she poked me in the chest with her index finger ... I hope she didn't hurt her finger: "You say 'thank you'!"

"'Thank you'" I whispered.

"You're welcome!" she spat angrily, picking up the laundry basket and marched off toward the laundry room that was either seven doors down or, as it seemed to be this pre-dawn, an infinite distance.

Bella had compliment-codependency issues. Apparently a previous never-got-to-be-a-lover-because-he-is-such-a-prudish-jerk never accepted her compliments, and that was one of the things that destroyed their relationship: he never accepted anything from her, even something as small as a compliment, even something as important to her as that: a compliment.

"May I say something else?" I whispered to her stiff back marching down the hall.

'_Oh, brother!'_ Bella whispered angrily, not stopping, but called over her shoulder: "Yes, Rosalie, you may say something else."

"It's bad timing, and I'm going to say this wrongly, but ..." I paused but then pressed forward: "thank you for using your safe word."

Bella stopped.

She didn't put down the basket.

She didn't turn to face me.

"I _hate_ having to say it, Rosalie," she whispered.

"I... I know, Bella," I said earnestly to her ramrod straight form, "and I'm sorry, but thank you for ... feeling safe enough to be able to use it, for trusting me enough to. I just want you to know that, yes, I'll work hard so you don't have to, but I want you to know, too, that I don't want you to hesitate to use it. Just ..."

Bella turned to me quickly, and put her hand on my cheek, silencing me. "Just shut up, okay?"

I shut up.

She turned back and marched forward again. We made it to the laundry room, finally, in silence. Bella place the basket on top of one of the industrial washers.

"You're not angry with me, are you, Bella?" I asked quietly.

"What do _you_ think, Rosalie?" She glared at me.

She had used my formal name, not my intimate one. Yes, she's angry with me.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"And you say _I_ apologize too often!"

I smiled sadly at her.

Bella sighed. "Let's get this laundry started so I can get back to bed, okay? What time do we need to leave for the airport?"

"Six am," I said.

Bella looked at me dumbstruck, then shook her head. "Yeah. Bed. Sleep. For a few minutes. That sounds good."

She stuffed the laundry in one of the machines and poured the detergent on top.

"Okay, ..." she began, looking around the basket, then whispered: _"shoot!"_

"What's wrong, Bella?" I asked with concern.

"You didn't bring the roll of quarters, did you?" Bella asked hopefully.

I pretended to check my pockets, then offered: "I can go back and ..."

"And leave me here watching the laundry? Looking like this?" She waved to herself. "No way. I'll get them; you wait here and guard the clothes, you sexy goddess."

Even as she was angry with me, she still tried.

She turned to go.

"Bella," I called.

She turned back.

I held out the room key for her.

"Oh!" She said, then blushed, taking it. "Thanks," she whispered, then scampered off.

It was a very sexy scamper. I sighed. I love her so much, you just couldn't tell the way I've been treating her tonight, though, could you? I resolved to do better by her.

* * *

**Chapter End Notes:**

[1] A safe word is a word used between lovers. Each person has their own safe word, and when the safe word is used, everything ... _everything_ ... has to stop and each person is on time-out until everybody calms down. Then if _she _said the safe word, wait until _she tells you_ she's willing to continue, got it? Make sure your lover knows your safe word, and you know hers, _before _any hanky-panky starts, okay?

[2] The fact that this chapter is coming out less than a day after the previous one has nearly nothing to do with the fact that the certain originating author and reader and reviewer kept giving me big Bella eyes until I selected the 'add chapter' option. But if you think that there is a correlation, ... well, I'll certainly not complain, and if I do, it'll be a 'sweet' Samantha-Paige-Melissa-like complaint.

None of whom I'm like. _AT ALL._

*ahem*


	3. Samantha the Panther

**Chapter summary: **Lions and tigers and ... panthers? Oh, my! You kind of want your 'top' protecting you if you're a 'fem,' and a panther's on the prowl. Also, wearing a pale green see-through slip? Panther bait. Big time.

* * *

As soon as I made that resolution to do better by Bella, I caught a scent and the sounds of the evening patrol coming from the opposite end of the hall.

The scent was of a panther. A human panther.

This should be ... interesting.

Into the laundry room walked Samantha, carrying a black mag flashlight, looking every inch a girl ready to kick anybody's ass that was out of line. All 98 pounds of her in blue jeans and a Dartmouth sweatshirt. The sweatshirt was a dark olive green, thankfully, not brown.

Not that I knew her _exact _weight. I knew _Bella's_ exact weight. To the milligram.

"Oh, my God!" Samantha exclaimed when she saw me, looking me up and down in awe.

"Hello, Samantha," I said carelessly.

"Um, wow!" She began, more than a bit nonplussed, then recollected herself. "Hot date?"

"The hottest," I replied.

"Well, there, missy," she said commandingly, "visiting hours are way, _way,_ over, so you can tell your Romeo that it's time for him to go back to his own hall."

"I'll be sure to pass that on," I said easily.

"I'm not kidding," she said seriously, tapping her chest with the mag light.

I didn't get to acknowledge her seriousness, because Bella burst into the scene out of breath.

"I ran as fa-..." then she stopped cold. _"Oh, God, no!"_ she whispered.

Samantha regarded Bella and then me again.

"Okay." She said. "I died, right? I just died and went to Heaven. That's the only explanation I can come up with right now."

"Um," Bella offered helpfully.

"I thought the angels were supposed to have better poise, though, you know? Singing hymns and stuff like that?" Samantha said a bit befuddled, but then leered at _all of Bella_, "... not that I'm complaining ..."

Bella squeaked, blushed, then ran to hide most of herself behind me.

But then recognition dawned on Samantha's face.

"Wait." She said. "You two are in the room next to mine, right?" She looked at me. _"She's_ your hot date?"

"I did say 'the hottest,' didn't I?" I asked.

"And you were right!" Samantha answered and added: "And roommates, too. Lucky you."

Bella gasped out another: "Oh, God!"

Samantha mumbled for her own ears: "Well, as long as it works out, but they'll find out when it doesn't how ugly it gets. Ick."

"See?" I whispered fiercely back to Bella, ignoring Samantha's aside, "I _told_ you everybody thinks you're beautiful."

"Hell yeah!" Samantha agreed, getting back into the spirit of things.

"Can I please just die now?" Bella begged from behind me, scrunching into me more.

Samantha looked back at Bella, "Are you 'Rose'?"

Bella's utterly confused voice floated over my shoulder: "Huh?"

"You know," Samantha explained, "the name I hear nearly every night."

Samantha squeezed her eyes shut and threw her head back and called out throatily: "Oh, Rose! Oh, Rose! Oh, Rose!" then looked back at us and smiled wickedly. "You know."

Absolute silence from behind me, because Bella had slide further down my back and was mouthing the words "Oh, God!" silently.

So I pointed to myself.

"Oh," she said, "so _you're_ Rose! Wow. You must be something."

I had to correct Samantha's error right here and now. I'm not just 'Rose' to anybody who thinks they can just call me that. And I'm definitely _not_ 'Rosalie Cullen'! I get that all the time: 'Oh, you must be Rosalie Cullen, right? Dr. Cullen's daughter?' I correct that right away, too.

It's not 'Rosalie Cullen.' I _didn't_ marry that self-righteous stuck-up snob, Edward Cullen. It's Rosalie _Hale,_ thank you so very much for never, ever forgetting that again!

"It's _Rosalie,"_ I corrected, "and, yes, I am something."

I'm something in Rochester. I'm something in Forks. I'm something in Stowe. I'm something in Dartmouth.

I'm something wherever I am: I'm Rosalie Lillian Hale.

"I thought it was 'Rose' ..." Samantha said in confusion.

"Well, you thought wrongly," I responded coldly.

"Then why does she get to call you 'Rose'?" Samantha pointed to behind me.

"Because _only she_ gets to call me Rose. She, and nobody else." I said.

"Wow." Samantha said. _"Somebody's_ a little bit sensitive about their name, aren't they?"

"Yes, _we_ are," responded uncompromisingly.

"Okay," Samantha said, easily. "No problem ... _Rose."_

That did it. I advanced toward her. I was going to silence that disrespectful mouth of hers — permanently — by separating her disrespectful head from her disrespectful body.

"Rose, stop."

I stopped.

Bella's quiet voice was the only thing that allowed Samantha to draw her very next breath.

Samantha glanced between me standing in utter stillness and my Bella, now exposed, two paces behind me, probably looking both utterly terrified at what I was so obviously planning to do and utterly determined to stop me, probably by throwing herself between me and my intended victim if necessary.

"Wow," Samantha said. Again. "Talk about the avenging angel look!" Samantha looked totally unaware of just how close she came to meeting an angel for real just now. "Just kidding there, Rosalie, okay?"

I glared.

"Cool," Samantha said easily. "Well, I'll leave you two to it, ... laundry, that is, as that's not a violation of the campus rules ... even if the, um, clothes you're wearing ..."

She looked at us again, taking us in again.

She shook her head. "Wow!" she said.

She turned to go, but then she turned right back and addressed Bella. "You're the fem, right?"

"Um, what?" Bella asked, looking for somewhere to hide from Samantha's scrutiny.

"I'll explain later," I told Bella.

"What's your name?" Samantha demanded of Bella.

"Um," Bella said.

"Don't answer that," I told Bella. I turned on Samantha: "That's none of your business."

This was not the time nor the place nor the occasion to get all friendly with Samantha the panther.

But apparently Samantha got the answer she wanted.

"Just like I thought: you're the top," she said to me and then to Bella: "and you're the fem. Well, you had better ... well, you take care of Rose, um, Rosalie, okay?"

Bella answered right back: _"I do! And Rosalie _takes care of me, okay? Besides, talk to her: _she's_ the bossy one!"

Samantha shook her head: "That's what every fem says about every top, but she only bosses you around because you _allow_ her to ... but the heart of the relationship? It's all you, honey, so ..."

Samantha looked away: "So when you leave her, try not to break her heart too hard, okay?"

Bella retorted hotly: _"I'm not going to leave her!"_

Samantha looked back. "That's what every fem says ... and then ..."

She smiled sadly.

She turned back to me: "Um, just to let you know, the front of your slip has a, um, stain on it. I thought it was a leak from your Romeo, but I guess," she nodded toward Bella, "it was from your Juliet named 'um.'"

I didn't need to look over to Bella to see her blush; I could feel the heat of it.

Samantha added: "You may want to wash that."

"Okay, thank you for telling me, Samantha," I said.

I took off my slip and threw it into the loaded machine.

"Holy fucking Christ!" Samantha exclaimed. "There is a God!"

You would think, with the words Samantha used, that her voice would be other than what it was, but it was a sweet, feminine voice, and so it was so odd hearing her forceful words coming out sounding so prettily from her petite frame.

"Oh! God! _Rosalie!"_ Bella murmured.

I raised my eyebrow at the children of this generation, so oddly uninhibited in some ways and so easily flustered in others. It's not like either of them were seeing any more than what they saw before.

"Um, I'm going to have to ask you to go back to your room now, please," Samantha said officially but also embarrassedly.

"Fine," I said. "We'll go back after we start this load."

"Please do that now, please," Samantha said coolly, but I heard the edge in her voice in the accentuated and emphasized courtesy. She was representing the campus authority, and we were trespassing on that authority.

I looked over to Bella.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. She went to the machine, but her nervous fingers weren't complying: she dropped the quarters three times from the slot, getting more nervous with each try.

I sighed and went over to her. I put the quarters into the slots and started the wash cycle.

"Let's go," I said to Bella.

"Um," Samantha looked to us, but then she said: "Never mind."

I picked up the laundry basket for my poor befuddled Bella.

"Um," Samantha tried again, then addressed me: "I have a sweet little thing right now named Christina, we could ... I mean, so I got the message from you before that I'm not your cup of tea, but we could trade fems for a night, ... I could teach your Juliet some things, you could have some fun with Chris ... or we could give the fems to each other and watch ... it's always fun to see them try to out-fem each other, 'No, you can be on top!' 'No, please, you can!' 'How about side-to-side, then?' 'Okay, only if you want to, though' while we, you know, well, we could ..."

Bella was quiet up to that point but then she burst past me and was standing right in front of Samantha.

"You and your damn plans stay the Hell away from Rosalie, do you hear me!" Bella used that index finger of hers on Samantha's Dartmouth sweatshirt.

Samantha got an entire different message. She looked down. "God damn, girl, you are so _hot_ when your nipples stiffen like that!"

Bella absolutely shrieked and ran right back behind me.

Samantha called out, "You working out? I mean, beside your noisy nightly workouts 'cause you're not flabby at all; you've got really good muscle tone there ... just like I like'm!"

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" was all that was heard coming from behind my back.

Bella had been working out, but that was a little surprise I wanted to show the Cullens when we returned to Forks ... that is, if Alice hadn't spoilt that for us as well. I'd have to call Alice back later to share the secret she probably already knew and ask for her help setting it up ... that is, if Alice was talking to me anymore.

Samantha chuckled at Bella's embarrassment, so I joined in with her. "Yes, she is a hot little number, isn't she?" I said.

Samantha grinned: "Yeah, fems! So sweet."

"... who's not up sale on the meat market, do you take my meaning?" I looked significantly at Samantha.

"Roger that, Captain Rosalie," Samantha gave me a mock-salute, "I read you loud and clear: hands off you and your fem. But, you know, later, if either of you two want to, you know ..."

"Samantha, we've understood the open invitation message, thank you," I cut her off, annoyance creeping into my voice.

"Right-o," she said, "now I'm going to have to ask you two to get back to your room. You can work your 'Oh! Rose!' magic on your little fem, and I'll chalk this," she waved at me, "little streaking incident to, um, sorority pledge day? Three months ago?"

I grabbed Bella's arm. "Thank you," I said to Samantha, and we started down the hall back to our room.

Bella's thoughts had surprisingly moved on from her own embarrassment.

"I'm not going to leave you, Rose, you know that, don't you?" she whispered as we walked down the hall.

"Yes, Bella, I know that, ..." adding: _just like you promised you would love Edward forever_ didn't seem to be a helpful reassurance.

And also adding the fact that I could never give her children, something that in my day every girl my age — Bella's age — wanted more than anything. I have no idea what girls these days want. I don't know if they even know.

And there's the little fact that most girls who are 'bi-curious' in college find themselves happily situated with the _man_ of their dreams after college. Mentioning that to Bella now didn't seem helpful, either.

I've researched this, you see. Because the last time I thought myself in love, I went into it a proud, dumb blond with stars blinding her eyes and stupid romantic notions clouding her judgment.

See where it got me?

It got me bleeding my life out in a snow-covered alley with five men laughing over my broken form. Because they broke me. Forever.

This time, my eyes are wide open.

Of course, this relationship couldn't, in any possible way, be a repeat of my last one where I fancied myself in love. Firstly, because this time I _know_ I love Bella: vampires don't have bodily reactions to cloud their judgement, and I felt the _change_ in me that forever ties me to Bella. Secondly, Bella couldn't possibly hurt me ... physically. This situation has the opposite problem, in fact: I could hurt her, physically, so easily, just by a simple moment of carelessness from me.

So if I'm going to love somebody, as I love Bella, I want to know what the Hell I'm walking into this time.

And, for a young girl just coming off a derailed wedding? Going into a lesbian relationship? Just out of high school?

The odds for this working for any length of time? Not very good. Bad, in fact. Very bad. It's a sad statement that my relationship now with Bella has much worse chance of success than if I had actually married Royce. The odds for this working were so bad, that if this were a wager it would be called a 'sucker bet.' And that would make me, taking this bet? That would make me the sucker.

That's me. Rosalie Lillian Hale. The sucker.

And I had promised myself I would never play the fool again. I promised myself on my own damned empty grave in Rochester.

I promised myself.

But I don't care. I saw Guys and Dolls — when it came out as a talkie (they call them 'movies' these days) in 1955, in fact — so I know how to win sucker bets.

You can't.

Unless.

Unless you throw everything you have into it.

And, in most cases, you still lose, but ... well, I know what blind optimism got me before, so I won't say what I hope. So I'll just say this.

I will let Bella love me as long as she wants to love me, which may, in the very off-chance, be forever.

But if it isn't ... well ... then I would ...

Well, then, for the first time in my existence, I have no idea what I would do.

So, for now, for as long as possible, I would love her and let her love me for as long as she wants to.

I changed topics.

"You did see me stop, right? I didn't kill her, even though I was about to. You said 'stop' and I stopped this time." _This time,_ I added the rueful thought, even though I failed to do the more important time, with her.

"Yes, Rose, I saw it. You stopped, and I'm so proud of you." She gave me a quick peck on the shoulder.

From down the hallway a call of "Do that in your room, girls!" came to us from a certain human panther on patrol.

"Oh, God!" Bella exclaimed. "Can we please just..."

We got to the door quickly. I took the key from my embarrassed Bella and opened the door for her.

I closed the door behind me, leaning my back against it, and looked at Bella.

I snickered.

* * *

**Chapter End Notes:**

[1] I so wanted Sam to guess that Bella and Rosalie were Mormons, or Latter Day Saints (LDS), right after Bella burst into the room with the roll of quarters, 'cause why? Cause they're dressed ... _dressily_ ... and they hang together. Bella would answer something like: "But I thought they didn't allow gays." And Sam would say that she knew the Mormons' embarrassing little secret. There are _a lot_ of gays in LDS! I mean, come on: they sequester the boys with the boys and the girls with the girls when they do mission work out in the rest of 'Godless America,' and once you get into that little 'community' (that the LDS is in no way encouraging, for the record, so this little end note makes no implication, supposition or whatever about the LDS's stance on ... erhm, alternate lifestyle choices, but ... well, anyway) ...

But it just didn't fit with the flow of the story, because at that point Bella and Rosalie's relationship hadn't been made clear to Sammy, and for her to know involved too much weird twisting of the dialogue, so I had to let this one go, too.

Bummer.

[2] In case you didn't know, a _fem_ is a fem, and a _top_ is a top. Just to clear that up for you. Oh! And I'm not _anything_ like Samantha the pantha, and I _didn't_ have that nickname in school. _Really!_ ... my name's not even 'Samantha,' so that proves that ... even if a review I wrote in 'Rose Read' makes it sound like that's exactly what I did ... what I do ... what I ... well, never mind! But getting a bit of 'Oh, Rose!' good-lovin' from Rosalie (that is: as long as she understands the rule: _I'm_ on _top)_ while our fems... well, never mind, again, right? TMI!

[3] My other story "Happy Ending" set in 1950, at the outset of the Korean War, examines what Rosalie's chances of happiness if she didn't end up raped and dead, but actually had married Royce after all and got everything she ever wanted: money, respect, servants, children, a human life. Rosalie got her 'happy ending' ... do you think she's happy having everything she pined for as a vampire?


	4. Clean Teeth

**Chapter summary:** What to do after narrowly escaping the clutches of a panther? How about making some LEMONade? LOTS of _sweet _LEMONade. But then there's the issue of learning that _Esme heard_ you preferred '_Oh, Rose!_ LEMONade.' And what do you do with that?

* * *

"_God!"_ Bella exclaimed.

"What?" I asked.

"That was just so ..." Bella threw up her hands.

"Amusing?" I supplied the missing word for her.

"More like embarrassing, no: _mortifying!"_ Bella exclaimed. "I couldn't have imagined it turning out any worse!" Then she repeated an emphatic _"God!"_

"Actually," I said, "I couldn't imagine it going any better ..."

"_What?"_ Bella exploded in surprise.

"Think about it, Bella," I said reasonably, "another person confirmed you're beautiful and, well, desirable. That's obvious, of course, but if you had difficulty believing it from just me and ... well, my kind, as you've just complained in the hall ... well, now you have another data point."

"_God, Rosalie!"_ Bella whined. "She wanted to serve me with a side of Chris, whoever she is, and you're talking about statistics! Besides, her attention? She probably goes after anything that moves!"

"Actually, no," I corrected Bella. "I've been watching Samantha; and as much as I've teased her methods, she's very selective." Then I added, "She picked you, that's a very high compliment, because that means she wants you, out of the many other very desirable options she has available. She does have a waiting list, you know."

Bella's eyes narrowed at me. "What do you mean you've been watching her?"

I was just loving Bella's little possessive anger. Very much.

"Bella," I said smiling at my own pleasure, "I watch everybody who shows interest in you ... which would be nearly everybody wherever you are, be it in Forks or here. People are either jealous of you or desire you, so I just make sure you don't get into trouble, like you have before ... like I have before, if that interest turns to action."

"But you said you were watching _her_," Bella pouted.

I moved from the door and placed myself right in front of her.

"I'd rather be watching you right now," I purred.

Bella suddenly looked nervous.

"Rose, um, why don't you put on your pjs, okay? Or even any clothes at all, huh? I need to get some sleep, right?"

I liked watching Bella sleep, too. Very much. Whether she dreamed of me, or not. Whether she spoke of me from her dreams, or not. But she was still very keyed up about what just happened at the laundry room. She wasn't going to fall asleep any time soon. She'd be tossing and turning for the rest of the night if I didn't help her.

So I had to do this ... for Bella's sake, of course.

"Bella ..." I said, "take off that slip."

"God! Rose! Okay, settle down," Bella backpedalled. "I mean, how can you think about that with what just happened out there!"

"Didn't you find it exciting?" I asked, trying to mask my own excitement from my voice.

"What?" Bella asked in surprise. _"No! _It was embarrassing and ... well, embarrassing, and ..."

"Then how come you're panting, Bella?" And how come her scent was just pulling me right into her, if it wasn't calling me to have my way with her?

Over, and over, again.

"Because!" Bella answered. "Because I've got this scary, sex-crazed, well, girlfriend ready to mau-..."

I didn't want to hear about me 'mauling' Bella anymore, so I kissed her deeply and for a while. Until I felt the tension in her relax, and then I held that kiss some more.

Just because.

I pulled back.

"I have a question, Bella," I said.

"Yeahhh?" Bella asked lazily.

"Why does Samantha get to 'maul' you with her eyes, and I, your scary, sex-crazed 'girlfriend,' don't get a chance?"

"Well ..." Bella began.

"Bella," I said: "Shhh!"

Bella bit her lower lip.

"Now we have two options," I said, "you can take off that slip, or we can bring it to the wash after it gets all wet and sticky and stainy. Which do you prefer?"

"Um," Bella said.

"Take off the slip, Bella," I commanded.

I stepped back, releasing her, and she moved the straps off her shoulders. The slip cascaded down her body falling into a circle at her feet. She stepped carefully out of that circle, her hands at her sides.

My eyes went from the slip, piled on the floor, and travelled up her beautiful body, caressing every feature, every perfection that a human girl has, and every imperfection that a human girl has.

That a vampire girl, like me, no longer has. Predators have not the luxury of imperfections.

That's why tigers are so perfectly beautiful. To kill.

Bella's beauty, her perfections and her imperfections, pierced me to the core, and killed me. Yet again.

Every time.

I wrapped her in my arms, and her now exposed flesh dimpled with goosebumps at the touch of my cold marble that used to be skin, and placed her on the bed and straddled her, my vulva resting on top of hers.

I leaned in and whispered into her ear, "I'm so going to fuck you, Bella."

Then I leaned back and looked into her eyes. "Okay?" I demanded.

Bella turned her head to the side, closing her eyes, but she nodded her head up and down in a jerky _yes._

"Okay," I said, then laid down in the bed beside her, turning her toward me.

"Kiss me," I commanded her softly.

Bella gently wrapped her arms around me, and kissed me.

And it was a sweet kiss. It was a tender kiss. It was a soft kiss.

It was a Bella kiss.

"I love you, Bella Swan," I whispered in her ear.

Because that's what her kiss told me. It told me to tell her that I love her.

Because I do.

With all that I am.

"I love you, Rosalie Hale," Bella answered shyly, so quietly it was almost as if she hadn't said it.

But she did say it, and her, saying that?

If my dead heart could beat again, it would be beating again because of her.

I kissed her, lightly, on the forehead, pushing her with my kiss back onto her back on the bed. She released me from her tight embrace, caressing my back with her palms, as my lips traveled down her face, planting light kisses as they went, lingering on her lips, then went down to her chin ...

... then, very, very carefully I kissed down her neck, not breathing at all, not thinking about the pulse I heard so clearly carrying the lifeblood through her jugular vein and carotid artery.

Then I reached the not-safety of her collarbone. None of her is safe, not really, because every part of her is still very tempting, but at least here the blood doesn't flow as close to the skin.

I kissed her there.

Then I moved down.

And drew back, and took all of her in again.

I so wanted to tell her how beautiful she is, and for her to know it, but she's always so resistant to any compliments.

So why is she allowed to get angry when I'm hesitant to take hers?

Hell with it.

"You are just so beautiful, Bella," I said.

"Rose ..." Bella sighed.

I very, very gently poked her solar plexus with my index finger.

"You say 'thank you'!" I demanded.

"Thank you, Rose, for seeing me as beautiful," Bella said humbly.

"You're welcome," I said gently, and smiled at her.

She smiled back, shyly, so I moved up and kissed those shy, smiling lips.

"Where were we?" I asked her.

"Um," she began, so I kissed her into silence.

"I know where we were," I answered myself, "we were going to admire what makes you so _hot_ to that Samantha."

"Um, what?" Bella asked in confusion.

I kissed her confused lips and then sat up from her.

I placed my hands on her tiny breasts, and her nipples instantly stiffened at the touch of my cold hands, and she drew in a shocked breath.

"This 'what,'" I answered my beautiful Bella.

I bent down and at the same time slid down, my head now level with her right breast. I snaked my left arm around her back and rested my hand on her left breast and then I breathed in _her,_ her essence, in as deeply as I could.

"_Oh, God!"_ she sighed.

Her scent, a commingling of lavender and with just a hint of freesia, was just so intoxicating to me, and I was drunk with the desire for her. It hurt me, so badly, but so good.

So I drank. Very, _very carefully. _I tilted my head up slightly, and opened my mouth, easing her nipple in, and then I sucked, oh, so gently, did I suck at my Bella's breast.

It was heavenly.

Bella sighed, so I began alternately massaging her left breast and pinching that nipple with my left hand.

Meanwhile, I shifted to the right slightly, still on top of her, but my right leg pushed between her legs and my vulva rested on her right leg.

I did this because my right hand slide down to rest on her vulva.

She was so, so wet.

As I continued sucking at her breast, I very gently spread her labia and l let my middle finger slip into her vagina, easing it, oh, so carefully, past her hymen, being very careful not to tear it.

Bella's sighs turned to moans.

I sucked at her breast a little bit harder, massaging and pinching her left breast a little more demandingly, and I began to pump my middle finger deeper and shallower in her vagina, massaging her engorged clitoris with my thumb.

Bella's body responded. She squeezed my finger as hard as she could, and I saw her squeeze her eyes shut tightly as she pressed her head back into the pillow.

"_Nnnnnnnnnn!"_ Bella cried quietly through her closed mouth, and I felt her let go, as the convulsions of her orgasm rocked through her body.

I held her to me, my finger pumping gently in her, me, sucking at her breast, as she came.

She came down slowly, gasping in big gulps of air, almost desperately.

I gave her time to recover, then reached to the nightstand.

"Water?" I offered.

"Thanks," she said, taking the water, and weakly bringing it to her lips, sipping it slowly.

I took the water back, setting it back down, then turned to her.

"What was that?" I demanded.

"What was what?" Bella asked defensively.

But she knew what I was talking about.

"'_Nnnn'"_ I demonstrated. "Why did you do that?"

Bella's eyes shifted around, "'Cause," she said hesitantly, "'cause Samantha might hear ..."

"_Samantha,"_ I interrupted angrily, "is still prowling the halls, ensuring law and order in Whittemore Hall, firstly, and secondly," I added emphatically, "secondly, so what if she hears? She's heard every other night."

"But I didn't know that before," Bella defended weakly.

"And now that you do know, what? You're never going to let go when you come from now on?" I demanded.

Bella looked away.

"Bella, no," I said putting my foot down. "You aren't going to ... God damn it, Bella, if you do that you know what Samantha will think? She'll think: 'Oh, their relationship is on the rocks, time for me to make my move!' You _know_ that's what she'll think, and then you'll have no end to her advances. And do you think Samantha's the only one who's heard you come?"

"What?" Bella asked shocked, with wide eyes.

"Oh, you thought it was more private consummating our relationship in my bedroom at the Cullens and not in your room at your house?" I demanded.

"What?" Bella repeated.

"Sweetie," I said, "eagles see for miles; how good do you think vampires' hearing is?"

"You mean ..." Bella said terrified.

"Yes," I answered her unasked question, "Alice and Jasper, Carlisle and Esme have heard you call my name as you came, baby, many, many times."

"Oh, my God!" Bella covered the blush on her cheeks with her hands. "Even Esme?"

Why is it that Esme knowing something makes it so much the worse? The stories I could tell Bella about Esme and her escapades with Carlisle _in his office at the hospital_ for goodness sake.

_Nurse Esme needed an injection from Dr. Cullen._

"Yes," I answered simply, "even Esme. Bella _everybody_ knows, okay?"

Well, perhaps Charlie doesn't ... he appears as clueless as Bella at times, if that's at all possible.

"So you hiding your orgasm behind a weak, little _'nnn'_ is not going to change it at all," I finished.

"But it's just so embarrassing," Bella said weakly.

"Well, get over it," I commanded, "because everybody knows already, and all the vampires can hear your every panted breath and rapid little heartbeat. It's _not_ embarrassing, but a little _'nnn'_ from you is. It tells me I'm not good enough for you. What? Are you saying you're embarrassed of me, is that it?"

"No, Rose, that's not it, ..." Bella defended.

"Well, okay, then," I said forcefully. "Let's try that again, then, because that last one _doesn't count!"_

"I didn't know you were keeping count," Bella whispered sadly.

I'm not, but that's beside the point.

"I'm _not_ keeping count, Bella, okay?" I answered angrily. "But I want Samantha and the Cullens and the whole God damned world to know I'm for you. Only you. Got it?"

"Yeah," Bella said sadly, "I got it, Rose, and I'm sorry I disappointed you with my ..."

"Bella, _don't apologize,"_ I hissed. "You are such a wonderful lover and you came so beautifully, ..."

Here Bella turned a lovely bloody red.

I swallowed the venom her blush generated and continued, "... and I love you so much that I don't want you to hide yourself in the one thing that's yours, that's ours, okay? I've got you, honey, all right? And if anybody give you anything about this, I'll give it right back to them ... in spades, okay?"

"Samantha teased me about it, but you didn't say anything about it ..." Bella said shyly.

"Excuse me," I said, "didn't I say that you weren't a hunk of meat to be sold or traded on the open market?"

Bella swallowed, then bit her lower lip.

"Yes, Rose, you did say that," she answered after a moment. "And thank you for saying that."

I smiled gently in response. "You're welcome," I answered.

"Can I kiss you for saving me from that mean panther?" Bella asked.

"Yes," I answered, "you may."

I bent down, and we kissed.

I had learned after our first couplings that my hair always brushed down over Bella's face, tickling her, breaking the mood. And, since Samantha made it known today that I'm a _'top,'_ I've found tying my hair back eliminated that distraction.

And lovemaking didn't need distractions.

"You do know I love you, Bella, don't you?" I asked her.

"Even when you're angry with me?" Bella asked woefully.

It would be nice to say that I was never angry with her. But it was true to say that, since Bella and I had become lovers, that, yes, I was angry and hate-filled less often.

And it was simpler to say this: "Yes, Bella, even when I'm angry with you."

"I love you, too, Rose," Bella said, "even when you're angry with me."

I looked away. I hated scaring my Bella with my anger. I hate my anger.

And that makes me angry.

"Hey," Bella said, calling me back to myself.

I looked at Bella. "It's okay, okay?" she said softly.

I smiled sadly at her and patted her cheek. "No, it's not."

"So let's work on that, okay?" Bella asked seriously.

"Okay," I answered sincerely.

I'd work on my anger. I'd work on myself.

For her.

Bella kissed me. "You're so sweet," she said sweetly.

I smiled at her. "If I was as half as sweet as you, I'd have to take you back to the dentist for another appointment."

Bella rolled her eyes.

Can you believe it had been years since she's had a teeth cleaning? Her mother wasn't known for her organizational skills, and her father was rather overwhelmed playing the father for the first time in his life to Bella as a teenager.

That changed when she came under my care. The Cullen household has more M.D.s than most family practices, but Edward Cullen, M.D., too, was distracted with other things about Bella.

I am, too, but I take care of all of my Bella, not just the 'oh, I love you, Bella' Bella.

Oh, I love Bella. Yes, that's true. So I make sure she gets her teeth cleaned.

* * *

**Chapter End Notes:**

[1] Rosalie refers the to the 'trouble' Bella got into at Port Angeles when the four men who cornered her had much more than a little bit of teasing in mind, as the _Midnight Sun_ draft, ch 9 ("Port Angeles") showed us the twisted mind of the serial rapist/murderer that Lonnie is. Go out in groups when you're going out, girls, okay?

[2] Make sure you're on top of your scheduled teeth-cleaning, my dear readers!

[3] Okay, my sweeties, some of you have had questions about, oh: this or that. I'm totally okay with hearing and answering them from what I know (which could be totally wrong, okay?). Don't be shy if you have a question about Bella or Rosalie or Sammy or Chris or what they're doing or how they're doing it. Tell me I'm wrong, or ask me about safe words or whatever, also, the convo may generate a Muse for me, that I might put in endnotes because it may help another girl, you know? But I'll totally check with you first for your okay, and I keep it 'clean' (of names, that is ... the topic, however, may not be as clean as Bella's teeth are now ... iykwimaityd ... and Rosalie is proud of _Bella_ for not descending to IM-speak. Oh, well).


	5. Clean Hands

**Chapter summary: **If we're learned anything, it's that if Rosalie wants you to ... well, and a sweet little Bella-'Oh, Rose' whisper just doesn't cut it. Oh, no! Rosalie has something more ... well: _Rosalie_ in mind ... And inviting that? Oh, Bella!

**Warning:** Um, it gets rather, very explicit and may be a turn-off for some, maybe. So don't read this if you can't handle a lot more than missionary (for girls ... we call it the college position, 'cause that's what most girls start with ... you know ... in college where they 'start.' This chapter is _way_ beyond 'start with' ... so: WARNING).

* * *

"Didn't you say something about trying again?" Bella asked innocently.

"My, my," I said, surprised. "Can it be possible that the shy, sweet Bella Swan is even _hinting_ about something so naughty as her Rose possibly, maybe ravishing her most ravishingly?"

"Well, ..." Bella's head turned away, and she blushed fiercely, "you _did say_ that you would, you know, ..."

"Bella," I said, turning her head back to me.

"What?" she asked dumbly.

"It really turns me on when you talk dirty like that," I said naughtily.

"_Jeez! Rose! I didn't say anything dir-..."_ Bella began hotly.

My open-mouthed, passionate kiss silenced her protest. I kept kissing her demandingly until I felt her move from her embarrassment and until I felt her respond with her own returned kisses. I rolled onto my side, and my left arm wrapped around her back and my right hand rested on her buttocks, and I pulled her into me, forcefully, and I rubbed my whole body against hers.

Bella moaned with pleasure.

I pulled back from our kisses, and I looked into her eyes as they reopened and refocused.

"I want to taste you," I whispered.

Bella bit her lip and nodded.

"I want to hear you when you come this time," I demanded.

She looked away, but she nodded again after a moment's hesitation.

I kissed her lips ... then worked my way down her body. I paused at her breasts again, kissing each one this time, sucking a bit as I released each kiss on her nipples.

Her body responded to my kisses as they moved further down her body, until I finally reached my destination.

Her little baby vagina.

It was so _her._ Shy and hidden, so tiny we didn't call it a pussy.

We called Bella's vagina a 'kitty.'

She was aroused with passion, whimpering softly from my kisses. This engorged her labia, pressing them together, hiding her more from me.

With my right hand, I very gently spread her quivering lips apart, revealing what was hidden ... what I was seeking.

I kissed her there, between her vaginal lips, and Bella sighed a soft _'Oh, God!'_

Then I began to lick. Stroking vertically, from bottom to top, with my tongue.

Bella responded instantly, raising her hips to get more of me.

Which I gave her.

I insert my index finger, then twisted my hand around, and with my finger I motioned a 'come here, come here,' inside of Bella, feeling the roughness of her against my fingertip.

"_Oh! Oh!"_ Bella sighed as I continued to lick.

I brought my left hand up to her breast and kneaded her as I continued to lick her clitoris, and now suck gently, too, and thrust my index finger in a bit deeper, stroking her G-spot.

"Oh, Rose! _Nnnnmm! _I'm gonna cum! I'm gonna ..." Bella gasped out.

I quickly moved my mouth down over her opening and sucked in earnest.

"Oh, Rose!" Bella cried, coming. "Oh, Rose! Oh, Rose!"

It was a sweet little Bella-cum, with a sweet little Bella-dew that I savored as I sucked her into me.

But I didn't want a sweet little Bella-anything.

She was giving me everything she thought she could give me, and I loved hearing her cries of pleasure.

But what she thought she could give me was very different than what I _knew_ she could give me.

I spread Bella's raised cheeks with my right hand, and, finding her anus, gently inserted my finger to the first knuckle.

Bella screamed in shock, and thrust herself, full force, into my face, and came. She came long and hard.

And I kept her there, sucking her nectar flowing freely from her opening, thrusting shallowly, a little deeper each time, with my finger into her anus, cascading pleasure upon pleasure through her until she was entirely spent.

I knew that point in her body exactly. I knew that point where if she gave more, pleasure would be overrun by exhaustion.

But her sweet nectar? I can't describe it to you. I can't. It's _her._ It's lavender and freesia and so filled with life, but that mucus, unlike the fiery, peppery _ah!_ her blood would be, was actually a balm, combining with the venom in my mouth and sliding down my throat so, so soothingly as I swallowed it.

Whenever I swallow my own venom, to stop myself from taking her, it burns as it scorches its way down my throat. Should I swallow her blood — which I will _never_ do! — it would fill me with such power and energy and vitality that I would just be bursting with joy ... as I murdered my only love.

But this sweetness? It wasn't blood ... no, it actually made me _thirstier!_ It made me want to suck, to suck _harder_ and pull it, and break through that very thin membrane of her skin and pull her blood puffing up her little kitty lips and engorging her clitoris right into me.

It tasted _so, so good!_ That's what it made me want to do. It made me want _more. _More than she _could_ give.

But I didn't take more. She had just given me everything she could. Not everything she _thought_ she could: no, everything she _could._

To take more now? I would kill her.

I stopped myself.

I removed my finger from Bella's anus, and guided her body down with my hand as it collapsed onto the bed.

"Oh, my God!" she breathed out. "Oh, my God!"

She panted, trying to catch her breath. "Oh, God!" she repeated.

Her voice coming to me? Telling me she's still alive? It was pure music to me. It was ... it was ...

I wish I wasn't a vampire, so I wouldn't desire her blood more than her voice after she came. I wish I could just love her, and not lust after her blood, and not have to fight myself, every time, in our love-making.

I wish all these things. But I put all my wishes and regrets aside, and looked at the girl whom I love more than all these wishes and regrets, and who loves me.

_Who loves me._

I sucked up the last few dropplets of Bella-dew coming out of her and looked up at her and smiled.

She was entirely lost in her recovery, entirely so far gone, even beyond her 'happy place,' so I kissed her little kitty softly and sweetly. Then kissed it again, because one sweet little kiss just wasn't enough.

Okay, she needed just one more kiss there. So I kissed her just once more. Okay, maybe two or three times more.

"Kiss me," Bella pleaded.

Somebody had returned to Earth, it seems.

I slid up her body and pressed my lips to hers, kissing her on the lips.

"Is that how I taste to you? Like flowery soap?" Bella asked after I removed my lips.

Well, I suppose that's one way to say it. "Yes," I answered simply. My venom fundamentally altered what would smell and taste like salty-tangy mucus to what she smelled and tasted like to me: a lavender and freesia ambrosia.

"How do you, you know, resist that?" Bella asked.

"Shhh," I scolded her softly.

Bella looked away.

"Does everybody smell that good to you?" she asked quietly.

I sighed. "No, Bella," I answered, "everybody smells incredibly tempting, but you ..."

Bella's scent, somehow, was more appealing to vampires than most humans.

"I'm sorry for smelling so good," Bella apologized.

"Water?" I asked, changing topics. Bella smelled good, but that didn't matter. I am Rosalie Lillian Hale.

And I love her. I love her taste, and it's impossible to resist the _pull_ of her and her scent, but I love her more. It's as simple as that.

Bella nodded.

"Let me wash my hands first, okay?" I said.

"Take me with you?" Bella asked.

"Oh," I said. It was always so hard, keeping track of Bella's frail human needs. "Sure," I said.

I scooped her up easily, being careful to keep my right hand away from her, and brought her to our bathroom, sitting her down on the toilet seat.

As Bella did her business, I washed my hands. Thoroughly.

"I'm done," Bella called from the toilet.

I turned back to her. "Okay ..." I said quizzically.

"Help me up, you ravishing vam-..." Bella began, then immediately corrected herself, "you ravishing lover, you!"

"Did I totally exhaust my poor Bella-wewwa?" I asked, pleased.

"Yeah, yeah," Bella responded sarcastically, "you're so amazing, okay, Rose? Now help me up, huh?"

I smiled. I went over to her, washed her bottom with a scoop of water from the sink, flushed the toilet, snaked my arm around her and walked her to the sink.

As I held her, she washed her hands.

"You think I'm amazing?" I asked.

Bella lifted up her head with effort and kissed my cheek.

"You're the best," she said simply.

"Thanks," I said.

Of course I'm the best. I tell myself that everyday, in front of the mirror. 'I am Rosalie Lillian Hale,' I remind myself, which, of course, implies that I'm the best of all the world.

But it's nice to hear that from somebody else, too.

From somebody who's better than me, in every measurable way. And in every way that's immeasurable, too, in fact.

I brought her back to the bed and covered her up.

My Bella. The best.

* * *

**Chapter End Notes:**

[1] bb's wife is from the Philippines, she calls the plastic scoop thingie a 'tabo.' I don't know what it's called otherwise.

[2] You did notice, dear readers, that Bella had to go number two, right? So Rosalie fvcked the ... um, well ... um ... should I remove this note? Too purile? Because I thought the chapter ended very sweetly, and I'm sorry if I've turned off some of you with the detailed and explicit description of how Rosalie got Bella to give more than what she thought was her all. But I think it's important to them that they ... well, ... that they are like they are, and I don't think you want me to fade to black. Should I put up a warning at the top? I'll put a warning at the top.

[3] And you had better be God damn very, very careful and gentle with your lover before you even think the word 'anal.' And you check with her, way before you do this. And you stop when she says stop. We're jumping into the middle of the BellaRose relationship where they've already cleared this with each other. AND Rosalie a vampire, so she can sense Bella's comfort points and pain points. To be blunt, you're not, my dear, so just be careful, okay, and always check with your girl.


	6. Games Children Play

**Chapter summary:** Okay, so now it's Rosalie's turn, and it's not soft and gentle anymore. Oh, no: it's ferocious and demanding. ... I did say it's Rosalie's turn, right? Sweet LEMONade-making ahead. Yup, there's some, um, 'squeezing' in the games our girlies play. And 'Mother, may I?' My, my, my, Bella, you naughty girl.

* * *

"Sleep now, sweetie," I said softly.

"Hey!" Bella complained faintly, "one more time."

"Bella, ..." I said, "you're not up for it, you need to rest now."

"What about you?" she asked distraught.

"I'm fine," I said.

Bella opened her eyes. "No," she said, and pulled off her covers.

"Bella, ..." I said.

"I want you to come, too, Rose," Bella said.

"Bella," I answered, "that's not important to me. I ..."

"Rose," Bella said absolutely, "it's important to me. I want you to. Now. Please."

Bella was tired. She was exhausted. She needed to sleep.

But she wouldn't sleep. Not now.

And I couldn't tell her I had already come thrice. Once when I rested my vulva on her protective hand over her lost-bet panties as she quivered under my tickling hands, once in the shower as her soaped back and buttocks rubbed against me, making me squeaky-yummy-clean as I washed her, and once when I rubbed against her leg as I suckled at her breast.

But what I had said was true. My orgasms meant nothing to me. It was her, only her, that gave me any real pleasure. When she came, that meant everything to me, and my own orgasms meant nothing.

Because if they did, I would wear Bella out in less than a day with my demands.

Anyway, that's why I hunted alone as soon as I could after the Cullens taught me how to hunt: I satisfied my thirst on that disgusting animal blood, and then I satisfied my disgusting desires with my disgusting masturbation.

I still do that on hunts even now.

Because I grew up in a time when the woman's needs and body was something to be reviled, and pleasure was never acknowledged, and self-pleasure was something to be considered as an abhorrence.

My Bella was so beautiful when she came, but how I saw myself when I came ...?

But I couldn't tell Bella any of this. She grew up in a different time, in the 'modern' era, when a woman is supposed to be 'liberated' and feel comfortable with her body and be 'open' about her orgasms. She just didn't understand my perspective, because when I did try to talk about it with her ...

It got ugly quickly. When I told her that I had already come during our lovemaking and on my own ...?

She _didn't_ say I was being selfish. It wasn't in her nature to use the word 'selfish' ... unless she was applying it only to herself.

So she did something much worse. She blamed herself. She said she was useless, she said ...

She said horrible things about herself. Horrible things that hurt my ears.

I don't want to hear her say these things about herself ever again. I want her to feel that she _is_ wanted in this relationship and _necessary_ to me.

Because she is.

"Tell you what, Bella," I bargained. "You're supposed to do what I say, remember our bet? But I'll play you a game for this. You win, you get me; I win, you go to sleep, okay?"

"Which game?" Bella asked suspiciously.

"Remember that film we saw at the festival?" I reminded her.

"Ooh!" she mewed, pleased.

Bella, my little kitty.

Then she added what she thought was the name of the film: _"Let the Right One Come In?"_

Well, that was actually a better translation of the original Swedish title _L__å__t den r__ä__tte komma in, _but I didn't feel it necessary to tell her that was called _Let the Right One In_ in English for some reason. Bella's translation was good enough for me.

It seems Bella had become attached to suspense and horror films, of all things. And not because of us.

That's not entirely accurate: during Edward's hiatus Bella had seen some zombie survival film (or zombie _not-_survival film, .... unless you were a zombie) with some friends. She kept watching them. Like this:

...

Bella, cringing, clasping me: "Is the scary part over?"

Me: "Yes," carelessly.

How can these movies be called scary when they are all so predictable?

Bella peeks and sees a monster as it leaps at some random girl who had just had sex with her thug-like boyfriend for no articulated reason. Bella screams and buries her head into my chest.

After recovering, she whispers accusingly, "You said it was over!"

Me: "Well, that was a new development. The last scene was over just before you asked."

Bella, mollified: "Okay. Is the _new_ scary part over?"

Me: "Yes," not bothering to check the screen.

Bella peeks again. The monster leaps at the next victim, devouring the next course on the monster dinner menu.

Bella screams, burying herself into me again.

...

I actually enjoy Bella watching these films now. Her, squirming into me? I mostly ignore what's on the screen, as I'm occupied with the squirming and squealing mass in my lap during the screenings. And the nightmares that follow: 'Oh, Rose! Save me from the Jeepers Creepers monster!'

I 'save' her, all right!

So, if you need snuggles, or snuggle sex afterwards, I highly recommend watching horror movies with your sweetie. It works for me.

Does it ever!

Except I have to cut her right off a week before I go hunting. In fact it's no TV or movies or youtube or anything for Bella, just her silly Jane Austen novels to purge her mind from the former as she indulges in the latter. The first hunt I came back from in the early morning hours with Bella still wide awake with blood-shot eyes because she couldn't go to sleep due to her nightmares was the last hunt I came back to her that way, by God! I put my foot down, right then and there.

... well, after lots of consoling hugs and the rock-my-baby-Bella-back-to-sleep-from-her-scary-nightmares sex. I was in the mood, anyway, after a very satisfying hunt.

So Jane Austen novels then, but even then, only after school work. That's the deal, in fact, for everything. If she has school work to do, she does that _first. _That's right, no sex or cuddling or going out or movies until she does her chores and her class work. By God, she's going to ace her classes if I have anything to say about.

And I have everything to say about it.

No girl of mine isn't going to be anything but the best she can be. And Bella isn't just any old girl of mine, nosiree, Bella is Dartmouth's next valedictorian. Damn straight.

Rosalie Lillian Hale, slave-driver, task-mistress, and mother-hen, indeed.

It's funny, in a way, but Bella's reactions to horror movies is exactly the same as her reaction to lesbian porn. Whenever the girls start undressing, Bella has to look away from the screen, and when the moaning starts, she runs from the room with her hands over her ears, screaming as she goes.

What? Why are you staring at me like that? I have a perfectly reasonable justification for watching lesbian porn.

As soon as the penny dropped that our relationship was moving beyond kissing (that it even got there was a miracle), I had to do some research.

Bella wasn't the first one to catch me at my 'research,' however.

Alice was.

...

"Whatcha doing, Rosalie?" Alice asked in the ever-annoying chipper voice of hers, barging in on me during my private computer time. We had one computer in the Cullen household, and it was never used, so when somebody was on it (which was never), they were pretty much left alone if Carlisle wasn't in the house. If he was in the house, you had to tell him to piss off after his seventh repeated, 'How did you do that?'

I didn't actually _say_ the words 'piss off' to Carlisle when he hovered over my shoulder, but Emmett, when he was here, got the hint from my death glare that Carlisle, that clueless moron, so obviously missed, and dragged Carlisle out of the house before I practiced my vampire shredding techniques that Jasper taught us.

But it wasn't Carlisle bugging me now, as he was at the hospital, as always. It was Alice, who was, by definition, the house annoyingly chipper pesterer. I waved angrily at the computer screen. Alice glanced at the activity, two girls on screen where coupling frantically.

"Why're you on the computer for that, I thought you and Bella were ..." Alice began, puzzled.

"Not yet," I spat angrily.

"Oh," said Alice, sounding sad. Chipper sad. So odd. "I get what's going to happen and what's happened mixed up sometimes, it's all a muddle in my head."

She looked back at the screen for a moment. That's when both girls where in the throes of simultaneous orgasms.

Alice looked back at me quizzically. "It looks kind of fake to me," she said, stating the obvious.

"_Of course_ it looks fake!" I snarled. "It's _obviously_ directed by some stupid male, and the way they got in that position? Hasn't anybody online ever heard of credible suspension of disbelief?"

"So why don't you go to a site that has, you know, something more realistic?" Alice asked.

"Because," I exploded, "all the combinations of keywords I try in my search lead to this crap! And I've tried everything: 'real lesbian sex,' 'not fake lesbian sex,' I've even tried: 'okay, I'm fucking tired of this bullshit lesbian fake sex, where's something God damn real ... lesbian sexual intercourse.' I won't tell you where that last one lead me, because here we are again at another grainy obviously fake and cheaply produced ... sad excuse for pornography!"

At least in my day they had taste about these things, because a lady or girl in my station in life? I never saw even a hint of what was so obtusely plastered across the screen.

Alice's tinkling laugher was her response to my frustration.

I glared at her. Some helpful seer sister she is.

"Why are you looking up these videos online anyway?" Alice asked.

"Because!" I snarled, but then I had look away from Alice's expression.

Because she honestly wanted to know. So I had to find in me the guts to say that I was at a loss, and risk her laughing at me.

"Because I ... I don't know how it ... works," I whispered, stutteringly. "I don't know how ... I don't know what to do with Bella when she wants to ..."

I couldn't continue from there, however, as it got too painful for me to contemplate Bella asking me, and then me not knowing how to proceed, and then Bella saying 'What's wrong, Rosalie?' and then as the realization dawns on her that I was utterly lost, her forgiving me for being absolutely inept at this and blaming _herself_ for _my_ stupidity.

Then I looked back at Alice and waved my hand angrily at the screen, "And these God damn videos aren't helping at all! What? They're all rub-rub-_o-cumming!_ in thirty seconds, and obviously the girls are faking it ... most of them look bored even!"

Alice regarded me in silence for a second. I glared at her, daring her to pity me.

"Why didn't you ask for my help?" she said quietly.

I looked away.

"You didn't want anybody to know you didn't know something?" she pressed.

I looked back, "It's not that!" I said defensively.

But it was precisely that.

"Then what was it?" she probed.

Tinkerbell Alice was serious.

She gets that way, sometimes, with me, particularly, when her knife is cutting deep, and she knows that, and she knows how much her cheerful cuteness will only make me hurt more, not defuse the situation, as it does for other people.

"Look," I said hotly. "You already have the _man_ of your dreams in Jasper. That's sweet and wonderful and all that for you two, but I know how that works, all too well, but I don't have a penis to rape the shit out of Bella, as was done to me, and I fucking don't want one, nor do I want to pretend to have one during intercourse, like these God-damn videos all seem to be like. I'm a woman, and I want to love her as a woman, and I want to fuck her as a woman, and I want to ..."

I looked at Alice looking at me so calmly.

"God damn it," I whispered and put my head in my hands.

This was one of the very rare times I had exposed myself to anyone. I had done that with Esme, and I had done that with Alice ... and every time, it hurt. It hurt a lot.

Alice said quietly in measured tones, "Go to tribbing-dot-org for starters, then look up Abby Winters after that if you need to know more."

I looked up back at Alice, "What's her phone number?"

"That's actually a web site for," Alice smiled faintly, "as you were looking for, 'real lesbian porn,' with a woman behind the camera. It's Australian, ..." Alice said the country as all one syllable: _strailyan ... _difficult even for vampires to say it like that ... well, I suppose Australian vampires could do an okay job with the word ... "but I think they may do some of the same things that you and Bella may be doing ... later on ... even though you're both 'Merkan, ..." another one syllable word twisted its way out of Alice's little mouth ... "as they call you."

"Alice," I said sincerely in relief, "thanks."

Alice smiled, cheshire-like, and turned to go.

"Alice, how did you know about these sites?" I asked.

Alice turned back to me and tapped the side of head, indicating her ability, then said: "I want you to be happy too ... Rose, my sister dear." She said my name pensively. "I love Edward," she continued, "but ... well, Bella and you are together now, and I want you to be happy, too. I always have wanted that for you, Rosalie."

"Will Bella and I be happy together?" I dared to breathe out. I asked the question. I was ready for the answer.

I had to be.

Alice regarded me in silence for a moment.

"That's up to you, ... and that's up to Bella; you don't need my ability to tell you that."

Alice's ability, or as we all teased her sometimes, her _disability._ But it really was her curse, because she hated living caught between the possibly futures and the ever-shifting present, but she hated more that we all imposed on it for our amassed wealth and our secrecy, and then for even our day-to-day mundane things that we should just figure our for ourselves, like: ... would Bella love me.

But she rarely complained about her 'gift,' her cursed gift, and she helped as often as she could, which was too often to my mind, and when Edward was with Bella, not often enough to his.

Funny thing, that: Edward leaned on everybody heavily to protect Bella, especially Alice ... and especially Bella: 'Don't do this,' 'don't go there!' Me, I lean on myself, hard, as always, but in this case to try to make this relationship with Bella work. Sure, Bella could change a bit, be a bit different, but she's not the person who needs to look at herself in the mirror every morning to list her litany of fuck-ups from the previous day.

I am.

Alice looked at the computer screen, again, and smiled, shaking her head at the phoniness of the trying-to-be-passionate cries of the girls locked in an embrace they both so obviously abhorred.

"You'll subscribe to the Abby Winters site. Don't worry about anybody seeing or tracing the charge," she added reassuringly, "the trust fund handles the expenses and I'll make sure they know not to bring up certain internet charges at the next board meeting."

Then she looked at me, smiling sadly: "They never did with Emmett; I made sure of that, too."

And she left.

I turned back to the computer, and now it was my turn to shake my head, but not for what was going on screen, but for what was going on inside of me. Everything I touched, I ruined. Emmett was another casualty of my slackness. I just picked him up in that Tennessee forest and begged Carlisle to save him, without thinking through the long term consequences of my actions. I wasn't going to let myself hurt Bella in this way.

I typed in 'tribbing-dot-org' into the browser, and set to work, studying.

...

So Bella and I had seen _L__å__t den r__ä__tte komma in._ And it caught me by surprise, like a punch to the stomach (yours, not mine, for a punch to my stomach would break your hand), because when I saw Oskar, the little blond-haired boy, I saw the son I never had, and when I saw his mother so cold and distant but also worrying and scolding and fussing over him, I saw my mother in how she treated me sometimes.

I saw myself.

Bella saw something else entirely.

"That was so romantic!" she sniffed as we walked out of the screening into the star-filled night.

I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about then, but I held her to me as she cried her way back to our dorm room.

I did see, that night, what she meant, for in bed, instead of going right at it, she begged me to play 'that game.'

"Which game?" I asked Bella.

"You know, the one in the movie? The 'bibbidy-bobidy-boo' game?" she pleaded.

And then it dawned on me the 'romanticism' of the movie. She saw me as Elie, the wise, sad vampire trapped in a girl's body with the blood lust so strong ever driving her forward. Just like me. She saw herself as Oskar, so hopelessly in love with Elie. Just like her.

And, in a way, in several ways, she was right, because I would have done exactly what Elie did to those boys that were drowning Oskar. If those men in Port Angeles had come across me, and not Edward?

The police wouldn't be able to piece the body parts back together for weeks from what I would leave of them.

Touch my Bella? You would be lucky if she was there, because then your death would be near instantaneous. She'd have to see what I did because I couldn't risk you _ever_ getting near her again, even in the next second. And if she wasn't there ... I'd make an example of you that would make national headlines.

I did just that in 1933 in Rochester and in Atlanta.

I put this reflection aside. This was not something Bella needed to know nor to think about. If it happened, because I would foolishly let her wander off into a darkened alley in Dartmouth, then it happened.

That would _never_ happen. I wasn't stupid-Edward to allow a girl to walk unescorted into a den of murdering rapists. I did that once already with myself; I wasn't going to play that game — _again_ — with Bella. Sure, she could go wherever she wanted (because I also wasn't kidnapper-Edward, either), just so long as she had a friend with her.

And I'm her friend. For as long as she wants me to be her friend.

So it wasn't necessary for her to know this, because the situation would never come up.

Instead I corrected her, "You mean 'bulleri bulleri bock'?"

"Yeah! That one!" she said, still pleased.

So we played that game that night.

And so, I offered to play that game with her tonight.

And I didn't see why she was so happy about it, she _never, ever _won this game, not the first time we played it, and not since. What with her weak human tactile senses and my ... attuned ones? She didn't stand a chance at winning.

"All right," I said easily, "game is to five points."

Bella turned away from me eagerly. "Do me first!" she enthused.

I smiled. I tapped my fingers against her softly, singing the words 'bulleri bulleri bock' then pressed four splayed fingers gently into her shoulder blade.

"Um, ..." Bella paused thinking, "three?"

"No, Bella," I answered, "it was four fingers."

"You have to press harder," she sulked.

"Okay, but that's one for me so far."

We played two more rounds, she guessed the next two correctly, as I really spread my fingers apart and pushed into her with slightly more than gentle force.

I was actually rather surprised she even got those next two at all, however ... the back is just such an insensitive area of the human body.

Not so for vampires.

For, after all, every sense of ours is perfectly honed to answer one of two ever-present questions: 'where is my enemy?' and 'where is my food?' For vampires are perfected survivors, designed from the ground up to be killing machines.

So there would be no way I could guess wrong ... and the next three turns were mine.

"'Bulleri bulleri boo,'" my little Bella began saying it her own way, and she tried every trick in the book on the next three rounds. She tried pressing lightly, she tried putting her fingers together. She even tried 'the thumb is not a finger' trick on the last one.

"How many fingers?" she asked slyly on the last round.

"Four fingers," I answered confidently ...

"No, Rose, it's ..." she began.

And I finished for her: "And a thumb, making five digits."

"_Hmmphf!"_ she pouted.

"Okay, it's four for me, and two for you, Bella, so this next point will finish the game."

Because we had done three each, so it was her turn on me. Obviously she would lose this point.

Because I don't throw bets or games. If Bella wants to win, she has to earn it. I refuse to cheapen a victory, because her victories must be sweet, not soured by my letting her win.

"What if you guess wrong, Rose," Bella asked my back carefully, but her little heart picked up its rhythm, "how many points would that be?"

"I'm not going to guess wrong_ly_," I told her with finality. And with correct grammar, too.

"But what if you do?" she pressed.

"Oh," I said carelessly, "a hundred points."

"Wow!" Bella exclaimed, "a hundred points!"

"But only for this game," I clarified.

"But that means I would win," she clarified back.

"Yes, Bella," I said patiently, "if you were to win this round because I guessed wrongly, then you would win the game. Yes. But since I won't, you won't win the ..."

"You don't look like Alice to me," Bella interrupted.

"Okay, then, my little clever finger-presser, play on," I said easily.

"Okay," said Bella, trying, unsuccessfully, to mask her excitement.

"'Bulleri, bulleri boo,'" she chanted, "how many fingers on you?"

Then she lifted her hand away from my back completely.

"Bella," I said, "you're supposed to ... _ah?"_

I gasped out in surprise, because Bella's lips were now pressed, gently, on my shoulder blade.

"Bella," I tried to recover myself, "you can't ..."

Then her tongue flicked out, joining her lips, kissing my back.

I snarled, turned quickly, pulling away from her, then pulled her into a passionate and deep full-mouthed kiss.

Bella giggled into my tongue now firmly on top of hers in her mouth, as my hands caressed her back, and her hands now caressed mine.

I eventually broke off that kiss, because I felt Bella pulling back slightly. I released my hold on her, so she could look at me.

"How many fingers?" she demanded in a sing-song pleased voice.

I recollected myself. "I don't recall anything about fingers on my back at that time," I said scoldingly.

"So you don't know?" Bella asked. "So you ..." I saw her smile in the darkness. "So you admit defeat?"

I sighed.

"I win," Bella crowed quietly but fiercely. "I so win. I win this game."

She looked at me, barely containing her pleasure: "I win."

I looked back at my glowing love, and smiled, proud of her.

The little cheater.

"You win, Bella," I said quietly.

"Yippee!" she squealed. "So, you have to, you know, take me, Rose, and you have to come, that's the rules, right? You have to. So there!"

"Yes, my dear," smiling at my queer little Bella, so happy that she won a game so that _I_ was _forced _to have sex with her so that _I_ could come.

Bella is delighting that she won a game so I could be happy?

What an odd little bird she is!

What did I ever do to deserve her?

"Okay, sweetheart," I said, and pulled her into me and kissed her, and kept kissing her and caressing her until I felt her body begin to lift itself into mine and begin to respond to my attentions.

That didn't take all that long.

I rolled on top of her and eased her legs apart with mine and pressed my vulva against hers and began rubbing against her with slow, firm, tender strokes, my nipples pressed to hers, my lips, kissing hers.

She pressed herself against me more firmly, thrusting in return. It felt so, so good, but ... I needed more.

I pulled back from her lips. "May I ...?" I asked.

Bella looked up at me trustingly, "Yes," she whispered.

I shifted to my left side, and rotated Bella's body so she was facing away from me.

My left arm wormed under her body and clasped her breast, and I pulled her back against my chest. My right hand went over her hips and rested on top of her vagina. Bella helped me. She scooted her backside into me completely and her right leg lifted then rested on mine, opening herself to me.

I spread apart her lips and inserted a finger. Bella gasped.

"Bella," I warned her, "I'm going to fuck you really hard now, okay?"

"Yes!" she gasped out.

Of course, I couldn't do that. That is I couldn't fuck her hard _for me,_ because I would probably kill her as I pulverized nearly every bone of her body, but it would be a really hard fuck _for her_.

And so that's what I did.

I opened my labia and quested against her buttocks until my opened lips found that sweet round spot of hers that that drives me absolutely wild, insofar as my iron control permits.

I began rubbing against that sweet spot of hers as my finger thrust carefully past her hymen into her vagina, in short, swift strokes. The palm of my hand rubbed against Bella's little bump of her clitoris, and my left hand massaged her breast.

"Oh, Rose!" Bella sighed, "Oh, Rose, please come; please come!"

I continued thrusting, just a tiny bit harder, and I whispered into her ear, "I need you to come, sweetheart."

"Please, oh, Rose!" Bella begged. "Please come!"

She was so close.

"I'm coming, Bella," I said, ready for her.

She came. "Oh! Ah! Oh, Rose! Oh! Oh, Rose! Oh, Rose! Oh, Rose!"

Her little, tiny kitty squeezed down on my finger, as her whole body tensed through the contractions of her orgasm.

I rubbed against her buttock: once, twice ... _oh, God! almost there! ... _once more.

And I came.

"Oh, God! Oh, Bella!" I whispered into her ear.

I thrust against her, and, as gently as I could, held her into me as I let the waves of my orgasm wash over me, the scent of me, honeysuckle and rose, very present, almost heavy in the air, and very much washed in my wetness along Bella's back and buttocks.

"Oh, Bella!" I sighed.

I breathed her in. It hurt so badly, her scent, the need of it.

And I breathed in me commingled with her. She is mine; I am hers.

It felt so good, so necessary, so essential to me.

I carefully kissed her shoulder.

"Thank you," I whispered.

"Hold me," she begged, so tired; so satisfied.

"Yes," I said.

"Don't let me go," she added.

"Yes," I answered, that is: until she fell asleep.

After all, there was laundry to finish.

"Sing me to sleep?" she asked.

"Always," I answered.

I don't know how she ever managed to fall asleep before, because she seemed to need a lullaby from me.

So I sang her a song from this age ... from the 1970's in fact, changing the lyrics slightly for my Bella:

"Time, get your plane ride in time,  
I know your part'll go fine.  
Flying back to Forks your home,  
Don't you, don't you, don't you know that here I am:  
The only living girl in New York."

And I finished off that song. I smelled her tears again.

"Rose, you are a walking stereotype," said the not-asleep Bella.

"What do you mean by that?" I demanded.

Me? A stereotype? I'm blamed of that all the time, my hair color made me an easy target, but this was the first time this was coming from Bella.

"As soon as you get to college you start in on the Wah-wah complaint Rock," she murmured. "Can't you sing something happy?"

I smiled at that.

So I sang her something happy:

"Start spreading the news. I'm leaving today. I want to be a part of it: New York, New York! ..."

This didn't put Bella to sleep: "Why are you singing New York songs?" she asked querulously.

So I resorted to the standby. I began "purring," as Bella calls it.

We vampires have a little secret.

Well, we have lots of secrets.

One of them is that biofeedback works. I vibrated along the alpha wavelength at ten cycles per second and theta wavelength at four cycles per second.

The wavelengths of human sleep.

And for good measure I added in a bit of delta, one to two cycles per second: deep sleep.

"No fair!" Bella complained sleepily. "And why won't you let me see the itinerary?"

"Oh, ... no reason," I answered easily, purring, to my Bella.

That didn't help. At all.

She forced herself out of the stupor of her sleepiness and turned to me.

"Rose, ..." she said, complainingly, whiningly.

I sighed.

"Bella, you sleep now, and let tomorrow ... that is, today come when it comes. You won your game, and I upheld my side of it ..."

"Didn't seem like that was all that awful to you," Bella muttered, grumbling.

"... so you have to uphold yours," I pushed through her complaint to carry my point.

"... Okay," Bella whispered humbly, "... but can I ...?"

I was about to ask what she wanted, when I felt her hand lightly stroke my breast.

I drew in a sharp breath.

"Bella, ..." I said warningly. She was supposed to sleep now; six am just kept getting closer and closer.

"It will help me sleep," she pleaded, lightly caressing my breast.

Making it harder for me to think ... well, think rationally anyway.

"Well, ..." I couldn't believe I was caving in here.

"_Please?"_ Bella gave me the big eyes in the darkness.

Why do her big eyes always work on me? Especially when they aren't supposed to. For her own good.

"Well, okay," I said as Bella squealed with delight and scooted down the bed, "but only to help you sleep, okay, Bella?" I barked out this order commandingly.

Bella's attention was someplace other than my words. Her eyes were now mesmerized with what she was looking right at.

"Bella?" I demanded.

Bella looked up at me, and smiled a very private smile. "'Mother, may I?'" she asked innocently.

I closed my eyes. "Bella, I'm not your mothe-... _ooooh!"_

Bella had, right in the midst of my rebuke, surrounded my nipple with her lips and began to suckle at my breast. Just as a babe would suckle at her mother's breast; that is: with all her might.

_Oh, God!_ that felt so incredibly ... _good!_ ... so incredibly _arousing_ ...

I wrapped my arms around her. "Easy, honey. Easy, baby; you need to sleep now."

Bella pulled back at that and looked up at me, and said wantonly, "God, Rose, you taste so, _so good!"_

And returned to suckling with all her might.

That's what my scent was for, to draw her, my victim, my food source, to me, and the breast has ducts from which, for humans, lactate, producing milk, but on me, those ducts become ports from which my scent and venom escape, just as for my mouth, just as for my vagina.

And Bella was greedily sucking as much as the few drops that my nipple could give her.

So my scent was _working._

"Bella, sleep now, relax, hon-... _oh, fuck!" _I cried.

Bella's tongue had just flicked across my nipple.

"Honey," I said, "stop that! You're going to ... _ah! Ah!_"

Bella's tongue became saucy. It flicked twice more, then, at my twin gasps, began flicking rapidly and repeatedly.

My hands, of their own volition, slid to her lower back, pressing her stomach against my vulva, and I started humping her as forcefully as her human frame allowed me to.

"Is this what you want, huh?" I demanded fiercely.

"Leths!" Bella moaned around my nipple, sucking hard, tongue flicking rapidly, exciting me further.

"Do you want me to fucking come on you, Bella!" I shouted, as my clitoris rubbed rhythmically and vigorously against Bella's stomach.

"_LETHS!" _Bella said, then pulled off me, looking up at with big Bella eyes, and said in a baby voice, _"Mama!"_ and then returned to my breast sucking hard for a second ...

... then she bit my nipple with a little tiny Bella bite.

"_Oh, fuck!" _I screamed as I came right into Bella's belly button — Bella's an innie, incidentally to nothing — and this time I was really coming, spraying onto her stomach, "_OfuckOGodOfuckingGod Oh, Bella!"_ my words ran together as I came.

I pulled her up to me face-to-face, and rolled on top of her and in between her legs, spread open her little puffy lips with my hand, pressed my pussy right against her little kitty, and forced my cum right into her.

"_Oh, God, Rose!" _Bella sighed, "that feels so fu-fucking good!"

I silenced her mews of pleasure as I smote her lips with my own, riding out the waves of my orgasm, and hers, with my lips locked to her lips above, and my lips pressing down and thrusting into her lips below, my hand catching the brunt of my forceful thrusts into her.

This was the first time she had ever said a naughty word during our lovemaking.

I think she may have possibly enjoyed the experience.

But I wondered sadly and regretfully as I finished out my orgasm, as she finished out hers beneath me, if I were destroying her innocence. I wondered how I could say to her 'you don't have to say _fuck,_ Bella' without hurting her feelings or ruining this moment.

I couldn't, could I.

I rolled off my little beloved one, and then set to work, quickly but gently, massaging inside her little kitty, pushing my cum into her further, and then massaging the rest of her body where I had cum on her.

No, I wasn't trying to impregnate her ... I'm a girl, too, after all, in case you forgot, ... _and_ I'm a vampire, vampires don't get pregnant and don't impregnate, as we're sterile. No sperm to worry about in my case, nor in any case, as any sperm have all been rendered inert by the venom.

So why was I doing this, if it wasn't to satisfy some biological imperative to breed?

Venom is a poison, did you know that? More specifically, it's a neurotoxin: it attacks the victim's nervous system, paralyzing them by sending one message: _pain._

And it also kills cells, being activated by blood, of course. That is, it kills _most_ cells ... but saliva, however, neutralizes venom, did you know that? That's how I can kiss Bella without her screaming in agony, because her saliva turns my venom from a poison into a balm.

It makes sense if you think about it. The venom perfects the living human body by transforming living tissue into this dead marble whatever that we are, but the saliva protects that living tissue, so when saliva and venom interact, they conjugate to form this hybrid that doesn't hurt but does heal or soothe tissue instead of destroying it.

I had put a lot of venom on Bella tonight, some in her mouth, some in her vagina, and in these places, the venom interacted with her mucus, becoming harmless.

'When you kiss me,' Bella explained once, 'it feels like ... I don't know, ... bengay, all tingly and yummy and warm after the cold shock, but it tastes and smells _so good!'_

But I had also put more than a bit of venom on her stomach and back. Bella didn't have any open sores or cuts ... she _can not_ during our lovemaking, and that's another reason I can't be around during her period ... for if venom touched her blood, it would start to spread like wildfire, turning or killing her.

So I spread her mucus from her vagina, over her stomach, and I brought my finger to her mouth, letting her taste us.

"Oh, God, Rose!" Bella hummed in pleasure after she had sucked on my finger, reveling in our combined honeysuckle and rose scent from me and the transformed to lavender and freesia scent from her. Then I rubbed her back with my hands, mixing her saliva into the venom back there.

She hummed again as the mixture heated in the interaction and then attacked her skin on her back warming and healing it as it embedded itself into her.

I had also sucked at her breasts, as she had sucked at mine, so I rubbed her breasts and nipples with this Bella and Rosalie snake oil that actually worked 'magic' on my little Bella, easing any discomfort she may have felt from my attentions and ministrations.

Or that's what I always told myself. But I also know this.

Vampires are territorial.

I knew what I was doing. I was marking my Bella. I was putting my scent all over her, rubbing it into her, in fact, with my massaging and caresses.

I was implicitly telling that Samantha, and explicitly any vampire or, now that we know, wolf, that this little girl in my arms is _mine._

The message of a vampire's scent on a still living human to any and all other creatures? Marked territory.

Or, simply: _stay the fuck away from my property, for she is __mine__!_

And, boy, did other creatures get the message. The first time, the very first time I had Bella, it was at the Cullens, and I noticed a subtle difference when Bella and I eventually came out, showered and presentable, and, to Bella's mind, discreet and decent.

But nothing could mask the new scent embedded, subtly, into every one of her pores.

And I saw my family talking to her a little differently and facing her a little differently, with a more opened stance, as it were.

And I immediately knew why. Vampires are very territorial, and once a territory is claimed by a vampire, all other vampires leave the area, ...

... because the natural instinct is to fight for a territory you're near. That's instinctive for vampires.

Carlisle, Esme, Alice and Jasper.

As soon as they sensed _me_ on Bella, they wanted to claim her as their own.

I could see it: each of them wanted to take her right there, fuck her silly and drain her dry. It wasn't an obvious thing, in fact it was a very hesitant and guarded thing in all of them. But I saw it. I saw it in all of them, and only nearly a century of control and civility kept me from leaping at them and tearing each of them to shreds.

Jasper had to go on a hunt right away that day.

It was a very tense day in the Cullen household, as I placed myself between Bella and my enemies, my family. Bella started giving me looks at my stiff and defensive stance, and, like Jasper, I had to take Bella away, far away from them until nerves settled for all parties ... particularly mine.

Carlisle gave me an understanding look as I made my excuses of a Seattle excursion.

I wanted to scream at him as I ripped his face off.

But I didn't do that. We barely made it out of the house with civil goodbyes.

For that _dog_ Jacob Black, it was almost comical, in a sad way ... that is, if I had any sympathy for that thing. He showed up on Bella's planned wedding day, came out of the forest at the Cullen's property, then saw, and smelled, Bella.

And me all over her.

He turned right around and disappeared back into the woods, and hasn't been heard of since.

_Good riddance,_ I say.

I don't share this view I have with Bella about her 'gallant' best friend.

Who sexually assaulted her on the rez and then played mind games with her, saying, 'oh, I'll kill myself' in the battle with the newborns to see if he could guilt her out of her pants and into his.

... He wasn't wearing pants at that juncture, as he was 'keeping her warm' by bundling with her in her sleeping bag on that mountain top ... you know, 'bundling' or how they paired off twelve year olds in the middle ages to get more farm hands in nine months?

There's Edward and then there's Jacob: Bella's selection of boyfriends.

And then she settled on me, the bridesmaid with a very serious bitchy attitude and a fucked up past that made any conversation a walk through a mine field.

She sure can pick them, can't she?

Bella sighed in pleasure as I massaged her breasts with our balm ... marking her there, too, as I marked her everywhere. I turned her from me, wrapped her in her sheet and blanket and then encircled her protectively — _possessively_ — with my arms and legs, completely surrounding her with me.

"God, Rose, you are such a wonderful lover!" Bella sighed contently.

"Thank you," I whispered quietly.

"Did you like?" Bella asked after a moment's thought-filled concerned silence.

"I liked very much, Bella; very much," I replied quietly but fervently.

I felt Bella's smile against my arm, and then she kissed it, sweetly, with a soft peck, as she drifted off to sleep.

I kissed the crown of her head, a sweet kiss from me, her most dangerous predator, who she loves with all her heart ... who loves her back with all her might.

For it looked like to all the world that I had marked her, and made her mine, but she had marked me much more deeply. She had marked my heart. It looks to all like frail, shy little Bella is mine, but the case is just the opposite.

I am hers.

Utterly and completely.

Forever.

* * *

**Chapter End Notes:**

[1] Rosalie refers to the time Bella took Jessica Stanley to Port Angeles to see a Zombie film in _New Moon_ post Edward-break-up and just post catatonia. That didn't go so well for either girl, but then again, Bella wasn't hugging on Jessica. Because that would be just wrong, on so many levels.

[2] How come great horror films have hardly anything to do with horror? _Jeepers Creepers _(awesome) is a brother and sister flick; _L__å__t den r__ä__tte komma in _(best vamp film ever) is about loneliness.

[3] Oh, make sure you have your Zombie plan in place. I don't need to mention bb, do I? He has 38 zombie plans. AND he's blogged them. The nerd.

[4] Rosalie calls the monitor a 'computer screen.' She also probably tried to talk into the mouse the first time she tried to 'work the computer,' but she caught on eventually. She's not as hopeless as Carlisle is at these things, ... but, then again, who is (besides certain parental figures born right before WWII) (not that I'm mentioning this about any ... um, _DAD_ ... in particular ...)?

[5] Websites mentioned copyright by the respective owners. This author does not endorse any particular ... blah-blah-blah.

[6] "The Only Living Boy in New York" is by Simon and Garfunkle, but I like the cover by EBTG because I heard that on an awesome little film called ... um, ... called, ... Well, it had Siggy Weaver in it (my kick-alien-ass girlfriend (I _so _wish)), and it was about a boy in New York who gets into all sorts of trouble pursuing her, because she happens to be his stepmom, so he ends up sleeping with her best friend ... who rats him out. Yikes! Fun little intellectual comedy-of-manners indie film ... is there any other kind of indie film?

The film is called _Tadpole_. See it.

[7] Rosalie purring.

Yeah.

It's in my brother geophf's story "My Sister Rosalie" (msr) in, like, a bunch of his chapters.

May I say something? Just so long as you don't tell him, but his story "My Sister Rosalie" ...?

Well, okay, it's inspired other stories, okay? I mean, this story is based off of Jocelyn Torrent's "Rose Read," and that story takes some of its cues from msr. So thanks to geophf for inspiring other authors, including me, to write, and Jocelyn Torrent for directly inspiring this story. So read his story msr and Jocelyn Torrent's "Rose Read," too.

Also, I don't think it's said often enough, so thank you Stephenie Meyer for creating these characters and the Twilight backdrop and letting us write about them in our own stories.

[8] According to Arabic tradition, the woman who feeds you from her breast is your mother. So that means that Rosalie _is_ Bella's mum (even though Rosalie denies this with a 'Bella, I'm not your mothe-... _oooooh!')_ AND that also means Heimdall (the Norse god, very much like the angel Gabriel in Christian tradition with his final trump) _can_ have nine mothers. Always wondered how that one worked, and now I know: Heimdall is _Muslim! _Go figure. So ... who's going to tell him that?

[9] At this point, where we are carrying on from JT's "Rose Read," _Breaking Dawn_ and the events therein didn't come to pass, so Rosalie believes that vampires _are_ sterile and cannot impregnate humans, because nobody's seen evidence to the contrary, except in the Amazon, but nobody knows about that except the affected (local) parties. So, Rosalie believes that sex with a vampire is the safest sex you can have ... I mean, ... that is, you know, except where they murder you at the end of intercourse, sucking you dry.

[10] My bb's story "Rose by a Lemon Tree," (rlt) ch 11 talks about his theories about vamp venom, and I got a lot of ideas from him, so credit, but that doesn't mean I can't come up with my own thoughts on this. I'm very pleased with my neurotoxin epiphany and bengay analogy. _(Ha!_ Those're ones you didn't think up, eh, bb?)

[11] Oh, and you tell me, after you read rlt, ch 14, that Rosalie isn't getting off by getting it on with Bella when she resuscitates her with mouth-to-mouth. You tell me that: 'legs intwined'? 'breasts interlocked'? 'full french kissing'? You tell me that Rosalie's just reviving Bella. ... Didn't think so. What? That's how I read that chapter, because that's the only possible reading that there is of that chapter, and sez whom? Sez mem! Um, 'sez me,' that is. (Mutters to self, 'stupid objective case: who says 'whom' besides Mrs. Brown, the Queen of England, for crying out loud!' BTW, awesome movie! (and she used it wrong in there! It should've been the nominative 'Who?' when she barked out that question imperially ... just had to add that little dig to strut my big, grammatical um ... yeah ...))

[12] Rosalie refers to Jacob bundling with Bella to warm her just before the big battle with Victoria's newborn army in _Eclipse. _I actually had a girl tell me about this practice after we just did a little bit of our own bun-... well, never mind, that was a few years ago and quite the wild ride with that wild cate ... I mean _cat!_ Slip of the tongue there, and sorry! (But _I_ was _on top!)_ (That's the rule.)

[13] (thirteen end notes, no worries from me ... the movie _thirteen_ was so sad, btw, watch _Show Me Love _instead for a pick me up that doesn't insult you with a sappy-happy ending (it _ha__s_ a sappy-happy ending, but it's a _real_ one, not a fake Hollywood one). This chapter was originally under 2k words, but then ... well, it kind of got longer and then I had to break off "My Nightly Shampoo," where Rosalie talks to herself, into its own chapter; the chapter following this one; the chapter I have to write, right now ... _oh, noes! ... but_ to do that, bb has to write his Esme story called 'Her Transformation' first (Yes, _Esme! _Squee! I'm so excited).

[14] You hear that, geophf? People are standing around waiting for your story (whispered: so they can read my next chapter ... that has no sex in it ... and is rather dark)! No pressure! My lovely readers: you don't see the next chapter yet? Do you know who's fault that is? _geophf._ Pester him now, please, to publish his 'Her Transformation' story so I can write and publish my next chapter here. _Him. Not me. __*ahem*_ and lol. (That's what you get for sharing your story ideas with me, bb!)

[15] Did I ... well, should I have made this chapter simpler that what it is now? I didn't see a good place to break it up into more subchapters, because the flow of thought here was just one continuous line and any introduced break (like between the game and the lovemaking and then the suckling) seemed too forced and artificial. So, I'm sorry it took so long to publish, my bossy, lovely readers, and sorry if it was too long. _Pout._

[16] Rosalie's honeysuckle and rose scent was my brother's invention (read msr, ch 24 "Rain by a Rose Garden" for another very sweet, naughty, imaginative chapter), and how Bella's and Rosalie's scents intermingle? He also explores that in rlt, ch 11. If I may quote: "For me, her scent is at least five times more appealing than the scent of any human I've smelled: my honeysuckle and rose scents — wonderfully fitting, don't you agree? — blends perfectly with her lavender and freesia scents to create and to complete a flower garden scent that combines to give the smell of restfulness, peace, with hints of joy, even. I've smelled nothing like it, and I have smelled more than enough humans to know this." Beautiful.

[17] Seventeen end notes, including this one. _Cripes, 'phfina! who are you, your brother?_ *shakes head sadly* I just guess a lot had to be said in this chapter, my dears.

[18] One more end note ... Just one more end note.

Okay. I get it, okay? But _Pride and Prejudice with Zombies_ or _for Zombies_ or _for Zombie Readers_ (or whatever the Hell it's called) (TM)(C)(R)(whatever) was published in 2009, okay? This story takes place in 2006, safely before that ... what's a nice word? ... 'book' came out. You put in your review that 'book' or 'books' like it, you automatically lose a cookie and ... _and_ you get a whole paragraph of vicious and just plain not nice teasing from me about your slackness in failing to check on the absurdity your anachronistic comment (you've already got part of the paragraph now, gf, but this one is the _nice_ one ... your review, should you mention the like, will get the _not nice_ paragraph).

The first two reviews that mentioned this ... erhm, 'book' get a (partial) buy on my not niceness, as they snuck in before I published this end note.

I mean ... _really!_ What next? _Homer for Homos?_ I, your lesbiatic authoress, can read the original ... _in Homeric Greek_ ... just fine as it is, thank you very much. I don't need a 'ooh! let's add sea monsters to the Ὀδύσσεια (Odyssey) to make it more real,' thank you. Homer was written (sung, actually) for _everybody! _Homos and non-homos, alike. _Jeez!_

Wait. The Ὀδύσσεια already has sea monsters. Oh, well. But the b-tards would add space aliens now, wouldn't they? And when I say 'b-tards,' I mean that _both literally and figuratively! _By 'literally' I mean: bastardizing Austen's works to make them popular? Austen's works _were and are_ popular fiction, for crying out loud! By 'figuratively' I mean ... well, you can figure out what I mean by 'figuratively,' I bet, right? ITYKWIM!


	7. Sweet Little Thing

**Chapter summary: **The things you find going on in laundry rooms these days. And college students study when again? Oh, and don't say to Rosalie 'take me,' unless you're clear she's clear on what you mean.

**Warning:** Explicit description of what is so tempting to Rosalie ... all the time. Dark.

* * *

I went to the laundry room to move the clothes to the drier, and, once again was greeted with an ... interesting tableau.

A girl was sitting, naked, on one of the washing machines, leaning back, her head thrown back, her short wavy chestnut brown hair cascading back, her eyes tightly shut.

Samantha was between her legs, licking and sucking greedily.

"Ah! Fuck!" the girl cried out throatily, and rocked in her orgasm.

I let them have their moment undisturbed, but then Chestnut Hair noticed me.

"_Shit!" _she exclaimed.

I shook my head. The language children used these days.

"I think," I said sardonically, as Samantha looked up from her handiwork, "this definitely falls outside campus regulations."

Samantha straightened up, but then shrugged nonchalantly. "The machine was on the spin cycle," she explained.

"Mmmhmm," I said. "I noticed." I looked up at Chestnut. "You must be Chris?"

Chris hopped down from the still spinning machine and wrapped her arms around Samantha, hiding her naked body behind Samantha's clothed one. Chris was about Bella's height, so an inch of her hair peeked above Samantha's head.

"Sam, who is that?" Chris asked timidly.

Samantha whispered back, "Hot nighty? Hot Bod? Don't-fuck-with-me 'tude? That's Rosalie ..."

"Rosalie Hale," I finished for Samantha. "Samantha is right: you are a sweet little thing," I said to Chris. She was, indeed. What is it about a woman orgasming that makes them so much more appealing? I don't know why it is for me — perhaps it's the scent and pheromones just wafting, oozing out of Chris' body — but whatever the appeal was, I had to swallow venom. Twice.

I turned to Samantha and waved at my chemise: "You like? It's a Julianne Samantha," and smiled.

Samantha whispered back to Chris: "Watch this," then to me: "The see-through white slip was damn fine, but you look smoking in this red one ... hey," she pretended to add as an afterthought: "since it's named after me, can I have that?"

I took it off. "Here," I said easily and gave it to her.

"_Holy shit!"_ Chris exclaimed.

Samantha smiled and whispered to Chris, _"Told _you."

"So, you want something of mine?" Samantha of the hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans asked.

"I don't think you have any-..." I began, but then Samantha grabbed Chris, placing her in front of her in a grasp very much I held my Bella as I rocked her to sleep with my orgasm.

"This one's a really hot number, too ..." Samantha offered.

"Sam!" Chris complained and squirmed.

"Go ahead," Samantha offered enticingly, "I won't tell your little fem; she'll never know."

That's when I suddenly realized how dry my throat was ...

I suddenly realized how _thirsty _I had become ...

I suddenly was overwhelmed with desire for that sweet taste of heather and jasmine just wafting off of Chris, particularly from that sweet little part of her body that Samantha had given so much attention to...

I suddenly realized Samantha's hold on Chris gave me very easy access to her neck ...

... and Chris was helpless in Samantha's grasp, just like ...

Just like every animal was in my own grasp.

And I could take them both, right now.

I could grab Samantha, and press her into Chris as I drained her 'fem' dry, then take Samantha before she realized that 'necking' meant something entirely different to me than what it meant to her.

Or, even better, I could kneel down right in front of that part of Chris' body that was producing so much of that alluring scent, that part of her body still engorged with blood, and I could reach up and put my finger in her mouth, and then lick and suck, and then when she came, I could just suck a little bit more ... just a little bit harder ... and Samantha would interpret Chris' scream as one thing, when in reality it meant something quite another. After a moment, when Chris' body became limper, Samantha might begin to see what was happening, but by then it would be too, too late.

I wouldn't have drained Chris completely, and the venom, paralyzing her, would work its way though her blood, poisoning it for me, but I still had that vessel of blood known as Samantha to take.

Samantha would know something, even if Chris' limp form didn't tell her — I could just see her saying: 'Wow! Chris came so hard she fainted; you _are_ something, ... _Rose'_ — but she would change her tune ...

... when I stood up from Chris with my bloody lips, and went for Samantha's carotid artery.

And Samantha was right: Bella would never know. I could bury them so far from here and so deeply under the ground after I 'finished' with them, they would never be found.

And all Bella's concerns would just go away. She, like the rest of the world, would only know that Samantha didn't 'come back' from Christmas break.

No big deal.

But, then ... where would it stop? Because after I had tasted tasty Chris and tasty Samantha ...

After I had had the forbidden fruit ...

What was there to stop me? Ever?

What would curb my temptation the next time I was with Bella, after I had given in this time?

And how would I explain my red eyes to the Cullens?

And how would I explain my red eyes to Bella?

She would forgive me.

Bella would forgive me.

Because it was in her nature, just as I forgave Emmett every time he slipped up, which was by no means as many times as Jasper slipped, and there wasn't a question in anyone's mind that Alice loved Jasper.

So I could take them right now.

So easily.

But it never was that easy, was it? That's how every crime fails: hubris. I hadn't expected Samantha to be walking down the hall when Bella and I were doing laundry ... who's to say somebody else wouldn't interrupt my little moment with these girls?

Would I have to kill that person? Of course I would.

What if that person were Bella? Bella waking up, looking for me in the laundry room ... and finding me: feeding on these girls.

And then, I saw how easily Alice's vision about Bella and me could come true, right now. Because after I had these sweet little snacks of Chris and Samantha, how would I stop myself?

I knew the answer to that one. After years, almost a century of resisting, this one little — _deliberate_ — slip would turn me into the monster I've always been, but have always caged and controlled.

And that monster would go right to our dorm room, right to that heavenly little source of lavender and freesia ... and drink every last drop of blood it could — _I could_ — squeeze out of her, loving every delicious second as I fed on my Bella.

And I would go home to the Cullens, alone ... and they would forgive me, as they had forgiven Edward and Jasper, and Esme, and Emmett. They all would try to console me, and they all would forgive me.

But even if everybody forgave me, I knew one person who would never forgive me ...

Me.

I wouldn't forgive me. Not ever.

And I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror with those red eyes, then those red flecks in the golden eyes ... if they ever returned to the golden lustre.

I smiled at Samantha. "No, but thank you for the offer."

Samantha shrugged and let the struggling Chris go: "Your loss."

Chris turned right around and smacked Samantha on the shoulder, hard.

"Jerk!" she spat out, and stalked off down the hall.

I looked down the hall. "I think you have some making up to do."

Samantha smiled. "She's a feisty bitch, but that's okay: make up sex is the best!"

"Well, then," I said and waved down the hall.

Samantha gave me a funny look.

"You're really attached to your little fem, aren't you?" Samantha asked.

"Samantha," I explained as patiently as I could, "I _love_ her."

Samantha looked at me. "Wow!" she exclaimed, then: "you're weird."

She headed off down the hall, but then called back lightly, "Thanks for the _chemise."_

"You're welcome," I whispered back, not bothering to mention that the chemise was not the only thing she was walking away with ... mentioning that she was lucky to have the breath in her lungs to thank me for my gift would cause just too many issues.

I moved the clothes to the drier.

I returned to the room. Bella was in alpha: dream sleep.

"Rose," she called softly.

"I love you, Bella," I said to her sleeping form.

It was so, so, _so_ hard for me, at the beginning of our relationship, when we started 'sleeping' together, as it were, because sometimes Bella's dreams were of Edward, and she called out his name.

That hurt. A lot.

I had to control my temper and curb my rage, then. Often. I had to remind myself, continuously, that this wasn't a conscious action on Bella's part: she wasn't doing this to hurt me, that, in fact, it was _she_ who was hurting, and was trying to heal her own hurts in her dreams.

So these recent weeks, when she's been calling my name exclusively?

Gratitude and relief and joy are little, tiny words that mean nothing to how I feel when she dreams of me, and only me.

I stood in front of the mirror in what humans called pitch black darkness.

I looked at myself critically.

"I am Rosalie Lillian Hale," I whispered only as loud as I could hear.

I am Rosalie Lillian Hale, and I am stronger than my base impulses. I am more than just _thirst._

I turned in profile, observing every part of my perfected body, removing the hair tie and letting my hair cascade around my shoulders.

Time to wash my hair. It had to be a quick shower and shampoo: I only had two hours before I had to wake Bella to head off for the airport.

* * *

**Chapter End Notes:**

[1] Okay, I was supposed to wait on bb's Esme story for this chapter, but I broke this chapter up into three chapters, this one, the next one ("My Nightly Shampoo") and the one after that ("Leaving Dartmouth"). So I get to publish "this" chapter for you and still wait on bb's story. Win-win!

[2] Now, I was also supposed to respond to all the wonderful reviews I've received for the last chapter, so ... but ... I haven't. _And I'm sorry!_ This note is _not_ my response to you, because _I shall_ (just like my dear Rosalie) respond to _each_ of your reviews. Please be patient with me, and I'm sorry, huh, please?

[3] I'm sorry to have to say a bit of unpleasantness: I've put on my profile that this story is rated 'M.' I do go to your profile when I receive your review or favor/alert marking, and if you put your age or date of birth, and that age is under 18, _don't read this fic!_ These are not my rules; these are ffn's rules, that you agreed to when you signed up to get your profile page. Please don't get me into trouble or my stories banned because you've published you're a minor and you've reviewed or favored my stories: this story is rated 'M' ... that means there are no minors allowed, no matter how mature you feel yourself to be, please, and I'm sorry.


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